
JUNE, 1901 


SUBSCRIPTION, $2.00 PER YEAR 


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Turning Points 


The Teachers* Helper is Published Monthly 


; Entered In Chicago Post Office a* eeoond-clase mall 
































THE NEW CENTURY SONG BOOK 

J 

The New Century Song Book is a collection of new, 


lively and inspiring songs, words and music for the 
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subjects. Several pages of instructions given. 

The book will inspire cheerfulness and enthus¬ 
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author. 128 pages. Price, Boards, 30 cents; per 
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>AfU*ACAft,r«»LtS*t1 


Over 175,000 copies of this wonderfully popular 
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This is a companion book to " Merry Melodies.” The songs are 
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Manila, 6^ x g inches, 64 pages. Price, 15 cents. $1.50 per dozen. 


PRIMARY AND CALISTHENIC 
SONGS with MUSICAL DRILLS 

A valuable hand-book for primary and inter¬ 
mediate teachers. The songs of the calisthenic 
exercises are accompanied by figures, thus fitting 
the action to the word. Explanatory notes guide 
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There are Motion and Calisthenic Songs; 88 
pages. Musical Drills and Marches, 122 large 
pages. Book Complete. Boards, 50 Cents. 













































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Z5timing Points in Teaching 

or 

La. tv M cl King and La tv 'BreaKr 
in g in the Schoolroom 


'Ey 2 >. C. Murphy , Th. 2 ). 


n 

Supt. Training Department of Slippery "RocK. 
(“Pa.) State formal School 







_/I. Flanagan Company 
Chicago JVetnj yorK. 







THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 
Two Copies Received 


JUN. 8 1901 


OnDVRIGHT ENTRY 


OnDVRIGHT ENTRY 



LASS^XXc. N«. 

/ O <7 / S' 
COPY B. 


Copyright, 1901 

By A. FLANAGAN 




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CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER 

I. Fitness for Teaching 
II. First Day of School 

III. Art of Questioning .... 

IV. Interpreting the Actions of Pupils 

V. “Managing the Bad Boy” 

VI. “Managing the Bad Girl” . 

VII. Critical Moments in the Schoolroom 
VIII. Blue Monday .... 

IX. What Makes the Teacher Valuable 
X. Practical Child Study . 


PAGE 

7 

22 

33 

4i 

56 

78 

9 2 

104 

116 

128 




































i. 


FITNESS FOR TEACHING. 

The term “ teacher ” is hard to define, if in fact it 
can be defined satisfactorily at all. If we say that a 
teacher is a person who is a scholar, and naturally 
adapted to the work of giving instruction; one capable 
of governing and leading others; one who has tact in 
management, and quick to see the needs of pupils, etc. 
— put all these things together, and yet we come far 
short of a good definition of a real teacher, because 
there is something in a capable teacher that is indefin¬ 
able; for it does not make so much difference what a 
child learns as from whom he learns it. “ The world 
is not starving for need of education half so much as 
for a warm interest of soul for soul; ” for after all the 
lessons have been said, the effect that remains — that 
which the child holds over from his school days — will 
be the view he takes of life, and the way of thinking 
which he has gained from the teacher. 

As yet we have no accurate test of a teacher's apti¬ 
tude for the work; no way of measuring the teacher's 
worth but by the results of her work in leading pupils 
to be stronger in heart and intellect. Only those, 
therefore, who realize to the fullest extent the magni¬ 
tude of the teacher’s work can ever expect to succeed. 

It is not necessary that a person be a Samson in 
physical strength, a Solomon in wisdom, a Job in pa¬ 
tience, or an angel in goodness in order to teach school; 
yet she must have the qualifications found in these rep- 

7 


a 


FITNESS FOR TEACHING. 


resentatives, although not in the same degree. This 
is soon recognized when we remember that day by day 
and year by year the profession of teaching is being 
lifted to higher and nobler planes. Teachers are doing 
better work; they are getting better pay for their 
work because of its quality; teachers are being held 
in higher esteem than ever before; school systems are 
receiving more attention, and the results of the work 
depend on how well it is performed. There is a 
great future to the teacher’s profession. Benjamin 
Franklin’s mother-in-law urged as an objection to 
intrusting her daughter into Franklin’s hands, that 
there were “ already tw~o printing presses in Amer¬ 
ica,” and that there would be no support for the third 
one — the one which the young, ambitious Franklin 
was establishing. But could she have looked forward 
to this time, when every town of five thousand inhab¬ 
itants has one or more daily papers, the mother-in 
law would have given her consent to the marriage, 
saying, “ The printing business is the one that has 
a future to it.” So the teaching profession has a 
great future to it — we are educating, not only for 
the present century, but for all centuries that are to 
come. It is, indeed, a sublime thought that those en¬ 
gaged in this great work may influence the minds of 
future generations. 

Scholarship .— The basis for “ Fitness for Teach¬ 
ing,” so far as can be gained by study, is accurate, 
well-defined scholarship. To teach well, the instructor 
must be a scholar. We are so full of theories and 
methods that we sometimes overlook the first great 
element found in the successful teacher. There in no 


FITNESS FOR TEACHING. 


9 


substitute for this qualification, and the better educa¬ 
tion the teacher acquires along with other qualifica¬ 
tions, the easier and more congenial will be the work of 
teaching. There is so much to learn, so much the 
teacher should know, so much she wishes she knew, 
as she stands before a class of bright pupils thirsting 
and hungering for wisdom. 

The less a teacher knows about a subject, the more 
trouble that teqcher will have with pupils, while the 
teacher with a thorough knowledge of subjects has 
better order and more respectful pupils. The pupil 
who realizes that the teacher is competent to instruct, 
has a much greater degree of confidence in her than 
in one who pretends to be competent. 

Scholarship does not mean a mind crammed full of 
questions and answers; mental faculties are not devel¬ 
oped in that way. By a scholar is meant a learner; 
she knows some things well, and has the ability and 
inclination to learn more; she is earnest and faithful in 
the pursuit of more knowledge; she recognizes her 
need of more thorough training of her faculties. A 
normal school alone can not do this work for the 
teacher, neither can the college or university. 

The person herself must do it; must grow con¬ 
stantly. Better be a growing teacher of very moderate 
attainments than one of finished growth with large 
attainments. The teacher who has ceased to be a stu¬ 
dent has lost the greatest power; for growing out of 
indefinite knowledge comes indefinite teaching, and 
this is one of the causes of many failures in the school¬ 
room. Facts must be made clear; illustrations well 
chosen; the language well fitted to the abilities of 


10 


FITNESS FOR TEACHING. 


those being instructed. Unless care is taken, there 
will always be some in the school who will miss valu¬ 
able points in the instruction. A little girl returned 
from school one evening, and during a conversation 
with her mother she said, “ Our teacher asked us such 
a queer question to-day.” “What was it?” queried her 
mother. “ While we were in the music class, she was 
drawing things on the board,— little round things, 
with tails to them,— and asked us, “ How many tur¬ 
nips in a bushel? ” “ That,” said the mother, “ was a 
strange question to ask in the music class. When I see 
the teacher, I will ask her about it.” When the mother 
saw the teacher, a little while afterward, she said, “ My 
little girl did not know what you meant by asking the 
class how many turnips were in a bushel.” The 
teacher looked surprised, and said, “ I do not remem¬ 
ber of asking that. I did ask, ‘ How many beats in a 
measure?’ ” Evidently the little girl meant all right, 
but the question was indefinite to her, or she was 
mixed on the terms, “ bushel and measure.” 

It is not everyone who is well educated that pos¬ 
sesses the power of either imparting knowledge or 
training the minds of others. To say that one who is 
well taught as a student will be able to teach well, is 
equivalent to saying that one who has been well doc¬ 
tored could begin the practice of medicine, or to say 
that anyone who has felt the power of the law could 
begin the practice of law. A good education is a val¬ 
uable thing to acquire, and without a considerable 
amount of knowledge a teacher can not be successful. 

T housands of young women pass excellent exami¬ 
nations and graduate from these colleges as competent 


FITNESS FOR TEACHING. 


II 


teachers. They are undoubtedly well educated as far 
as books are factors in education; but the man or 
woman who intends to make teaching the young a pro¬ 
fession needs many other qualities besides a knowledge 
of books. There are special powers which belong to 
the teacher that enables her to be master of the situa¬ 
tion. One of these special powers found in the success¬ 
ful teacher is tact — that peculiar faculty or power 
which tells the teacher the best thing to do in accord¬ 
ance with the circumstances. It is a kind of intuition, 
or power of knowing what to do. The teacher who 
possesses this faculty is able to manage a school prop¬ 
erly from the very first. He is a born teacher who 
goes into the schoolroom well equipped with tact. 
This power is distributed in different degrees. Some 
have received ten talents, some five, others only one. 
A teacher of tact will be ready for all emergencies. 

A Texas teacher walked into his schoolroom one 
morning, and found written upon the blackboard this 
sentenceOur teacher is a mule.” He said nothing, 
but took a piece of chalk and wrote after the sentence 
the one word, “ driver.” That was tact, and he found 
nothing more after that on the board. Tact may not 
mean to act at once, but includes the idea of delibera¬ 
tion, for it is not best to act hastily. 

There was a surgeon in the French army who was 
called to the side of one of Napoleon’s officers that had 
been seriously wounded. An important artery had 
been severed, and his life-blood was rapidly ebbing 
away. The surgeon looked at the wounded officer, 
and waited half a minute before doing anything to 
stop the flow of blood. Those about him were violent 


12 


FITNESS FOR TEACHING. 


in their denunciations of his stupidity because he did 
not act. A half minute is a long time when a man’s 
life is trembling in the balance, and it seemed to the by¬ 
standers that he had waited ten times as long as he 
realty had. At the end of the half minute he went to 
work, and before another half minute had elapsed the 
blood was stopped; the operation had been successfully 
performed, and the man’s life saved. After the sur¬ 
geon was through, an officer asked him why he waited 
so long before performing an operation. His answer 
is worthy of permanent record: “I took time to be 
certain that what I did was the right thing to do. I 
knew that the man had a minute to live, and I was 
determined to take half that time to decide what was 
the best thing for me to do.” Had the surgeon acted 
hastily, the officer would have died. 

Many instances occur in the schoolroom where de¬ 
liberation is necessary. The old mariner declared 
that he had better wait a day in the docks to have the 
machinery examined than to break down in midocean. 
So the skillful teacher will always know that that 
which he does is the best thing. Sometimes the best 
thing to do comes like an inspiration, but more fre¬ 
quently it is necessary to consider before acting. 

The true teacher not only has a fair knowledge of 
the branches to be taught, but his knowledge extends 
to human thought and human action. There are cer¬ 
tain underlying principles which must be studied and 
understood in order to produce evident results. In 
training children, nature must be followed. Schools 
should be made the center of mind culture, just as 
gardens are the center of fruit culture. The success- 


FITNESS FOR TEACHING. 


13 


ful farmer studies the soil ere he plants the grain. 
He knows he can not make all soils produce alike, and 
the farmer who puts his corn and wheat and beans all 
through the same process for food, we would think 
did not know much about successful farming; yet 
he knows vastly more about farming than the teacher 
who attempts to educate and discipline all children in 
the same manner. Children are not all alike; all can 
not learn the same thing with equal facility. Some 
have abilities in one direction, some in another, some 
with no apparent special abilities; but this latter may 
be because we do not know them well enough. There 
are abilities all about us that are never touched, and 
teachers are slow sometimes to detect the hidden 
powers in children, and hence a free and full devel¬ 
opment is hindered. Many of America’s leading people 
in politics, business, society, etc., were slow in school 
work, and only needed opportunity to develop their 
strongest powers. 

A veteran railroad conductor tells that one morning 
just before the Civil War, as his train had stopped at 
a little station called Brandy, and was about to start 
again, a boy of fifteen approached him, and said, “Are 
you the clerk of the train?” The conductor looked 
at the boy, who was dressed in a butternut suit and 
home-made wool hat, and replied, I am the conductor; 
what do you want? ” “ I want ter go ter Washington 

City,” said the lad, in his peculiar vernacular. “ Well, 
get aboard,” said the conductor, at the same time in¬ 
dicating that the boy was to go up the steps into the 
car. The lad climbed the steps, carrying an old-fash¬ 
ioned carpet bag and a faded umbrella, set the bag 


14 


FITNESS FOR TEACHING. 


down, and rapped on the door. When he rapped the 
second time, a wag on the inside said, “ Come in! ” 
There were at least fifty passengers in the car. Hfe 
began at the front seat, shaking hands with every one 
clear to the back end, and asking each, “ How d’yr 
do? ” and then, “ How’s yer folks? ” It was great fun 
for the passengers — a regular circus. The boy lived 
forty miles back in the country, and had never seen 
a train before. “ When he stepped off the train at 
Washington,” said the conductor, “ I felt sorry for 
him; I could not see how a boy who knew so little 
could ever get along in a city like Washington. But 
— will you believe it ? — that greenhorn of a boy grew 
to manhood, and is a leading merchant to-day in the 
Capital city, and is worth $200,000. 

The individuality of children ought to be recog¬ 
nized; the hidden abilities ought to be sought out and 
encouraged and cultivated. A boy in school was an 
expert in arithmetic, but cared nothing for geography 
and grammar. His teacher, in order to bring him to 
take an interest in the two latter subjects, took his 
arithmetic from him, and declared that he should not 
see it again until he could learn to take an equal inter¬ 
est in the other subjects. With pain, amounting to 
anguish, he saw his grade promoted to the next room, 
while he was bound down to two branches of study 
in which he could take no interest. Sickness followed, 
and his parent took him from school. He was crip¬ 
pled in his work, in his development; it was indeed 
a calamity from which he never recovered. If a 
young tree be bound down in such a way as to hinder 
development and proper growth, but when older be 


FITNESS FOR TEACHING. 


15 


given full freedom, it could never be a perfect tree; and 
yet the tree is not to blame for its crookedness any 
more than the boy that is thwarted in his progress by 
some teacher or parent who has not a profound knowl¬ 
edge of child nature. This is an age of specialties, 
and children ought to be encouraged in their special 
abilities. Child study is a branch which is yet in its 
infancy. The power of natural instinct can not be 
denied. “ The tastes of the boy foreshadow the occu¬ 
pation of the man,” and the proclivities of men and 
women are generally manifest in youth. A great 
many people to-day make a living by their weak¬ 
ness, and not by their strength, because their youth¬ 
ful tendencies were not recognized or developed, or 
else were smothered by their parents who desired their 
child to be something else. 

It is said of Dr. Watts that his father was deter- 
minded to whip the tendency to write poetry out of the 
boy. When the father raised the ferule to strike, 
young Watts cried out: — 

“ O father, spare my skin from pain, 

And Ell never make a rhyme again.” 

Lessing, in his poem, describes a man who will 
always be an inferior workman because he was mis¬ 
taken in his calling. He says of him: ~ 

“ Thompkins forsook last and awl 
For literary squabbles; 

Styles himself poet — his trade remains 
The same — he cobbles.” 

Flexible Disposition .— There is an element that 
enters into the make-up of a good teacher, and perhaps 


6 


FITNESS FOR TEACHING. 


has as great an influence in making one a power in the 
schoolroom as anything else,— a kind, flexible dispo¬ 
sition. A cheerful disposition brings sunshine into the 
schoolroom, and the children turn to such a quality as 
the flower does to the sunlight. Smiles are powerful 
agents in the schoolroom. On the other hand, one of 
those staid, unbending creatures who never smiles, 
lacks one of the chief elements to make a good teacher. 
Someone tells of a teacher who opens his school every 
morning by singing — 

“ Hark! from the tombs of a doleful sound.” 

He cut out obituary notices from papers, and read 
them to his pupils; he read only from Lamentations, 
saying it was the only inspired book. Such a nature 
could never help to develop in children any pleasing 
qualities. 

I have noticed that the teacher who is forever 
preaching piety to his pupils, but who can not keep 
order, which is “ heaven’s first law,” is of all teachers 
the most likely to drive pupils away from what is good 
and right. There is an idea current among certain 
classes of teachers that a dignified bearing and a sol¬ 
emn tread are the indispensable props upon which their 
reputations rest. To have a good, hearty laugh in the 
schoolroom seems abhorrent to them; and while a 
teacher should not be an acrobat or clown in the 
schoolroom, yet there is power in the right kind of fun 
connected with school work. Children naturally are 
drawn to a kind, genial disposition. When a little girl 
came to a street crossing where there were many teams 
passing, she feared to cross, and turning to a crowd 


FITNESS FOR TEACHING. 


*7 

of men who stood on the street corner, she looked at 
each of them for a moment, and then approached a 
sunshiny old gentleman, and putting up her arms 
said, “ Please carry me across the street.” 

The habit of good nature, if not inherent, can be 
acquired, and should be cultivated especially by those 
who teach children. If the teacher is cold and formal, 
the pupils soon take on the same characteristics; but 
if the teacher is cheerful and pleasant, then the glad 
light of a happy heart is reflected in every face. 

On the heights of the Andes is found Lake Titi¬ 
caca ; about it are found a dozen or more smaller lakes, 
whose waters rise and fall with those of Lake Titi¬ 
caca. When this lake is full of water, every small 
lake near is full of water also, the water in the smaller 
lakes rising and falling with that of the large lake. So 
in the schoolroom, the teacher controls the feelings 
of the pupils by her manner. If she is dull, how soon 
the same feeling takes possession of those whom she 
instructs; and if she is cheerful, the same glad light of 
a happy heart is reflected in every face under her in¬ 
struction. 

Confidence .— The element of confidence has much 
to do with the work of teaching to make the work a 
success. 

Perhaps more failures in the schoolroom are due 
to the lack of confidence than anything else. Confi¬ 
dence helped Columbus discover America; it gave us 
the Declaration of Independence and Independence 
itself. It was confidence that made Henry Clay a 
great statesman, Grant a great general, Beecher a 
great minister, and thousands of people successful 


FITNESS FOR TEACHING. 


18 

in their chosen lifework. Many persons who have 
scholarship and other qualifications found in the true 
teacher, are deficient in this important one. Confi¬ 
dence can be acquired, and any teacher who lacks this 
power in a strong degree should exercise any ability 
in that direction, so as to grow stronger. A teacher 
who lacks confidence in himself never does his best; 
he is crippled in his instruction by a fear of not doing 
things right, or with the fear that he is not doing the 
best thing. 

As the petals of the rosebud, under the guidance of 
nature, expand and burst into the beautiful colors 
of the rose, so the immortal minds with which teachers 
have to deal, led in their natural way by those who are 
confident of their own powers, can be developed into 
the highest possibilities. 

To-day, more that ever before, the fact must be 
recognized that the teacher is the school. One might 
have a Windsor Castle for a schoolhouse, lawns and 
forests as beautiful as those on the Isle of Wight for 
school grounds, with all the apparatus found in a 
large city, and put ignorance behind the desk, and 
there can be no school. Teaching to-day means ability, 
scholarship, application, confidence, perseverance, and 
development. Teaching is not all poetry, but the 
teacher who labors as if the fate of the whole world 
depended upon her efforts, and who watches the chil¬ 
dren under her care develop into noble men and 
women, experiences a delight peculiarly her own, and 
will finally be rewarded. 

With the greatest care, and after years of careful 
training, some children will disappoint those who have 


FITNESS FOR TEACHING. 


19 


been their instructors. A fine statue was being hoisted 
into its place on a lofty pedestal. It was a valuable 
piece of sculpture, the fruit of patient and skillful work, 
and an object of great interest. Careful, confident 
men were employed to fix it in position; but just when 
they had raised it to a level with the top of the shaft, 
the chain broke, the statue fell, and the labor of years 
was dashed to pieces in a moment. They examined the 
chain. A single link had yielded. All else was sound, 
but the crowning work of a lifetime had perished by 
the breaking of the one link. The teacher's work in 
some respects is akin to that of the sculptor. She seeks 
to mold young character until it is fit to stand in an 
honored place. Just as she has lifted a young life to 
that point where it should take its permanent place, 
a link in a child’s training snaps, and the teacher’s 
labor is lost. But how often the teacher is delighted to 
see her efforts rewarded by some of her pupils’ ex¬ 
celling in the higher walks of life — achieving suc¬ 
cesses because of the careful training and useful 
instruction she gave them while in school. 

Self-Control .— Another element of the successful 
teacher is self-control. At each moment of the 
teacher’s life she is either a queen or a slave. As day 
by day she lives on in hopeless subjection to her 
environments, she is a slave; as day by day she masters 
opposing elements within herself, and becomes master 
of her surroundings, she is a queen, and is worthy to 
be called a competent teacher. Self-control is partly 
inborn, and comes partly from early training. Some 
girls are inclined to give way to violent weeping 
when something goes wrong; they are unable to con- 


20 


FITNESS FOR TEACHING. 


trol the emotional nature. Boys sometimes slam 
doors, break into fits of temper, talk loud, act bois¬ 
terously; in their weakness they become the creatures 
of circumstances. These things come about because 
of a lack of self-control in their early training. 
According to a little girl’s testimony, humanity is 
improving along that line. 

Two distinguished literary men were one day dis¬ 
cussing certain peculiarities of our modern youth,' 
when one of them remarked, “ There is no more 
emotion among children. Mine read books over which 
I used, at their age, to weep; but they are apparently 
unmoved.” The twelve-year-old daughter of the 
speaker sat near by, drinking in the discussion. At 
this point she felt it necessary to defend her class. 

“ You are entirely mistaken, papa,” she interpo¬ 
lated, with some feeling. “ It is not that emotion has 
gone out; it is that self-control has come in.” 

No one needs to possess the power of self-control to 
a greater degree than the teacher. When she begins 
her school work, she must expect some criticism, for 
no one in public life can escape it. The temptation to 
use strong language is sometimes very great in view 
of the suggestions she receives; and yet it is far better 
for the teacher to summon her self-control, and 
answer by silence. If the teacher is to stand as an 
exemplar of self-control, her pupils must witness in¬ 
stances of it in her school work, especially in the 
management of children. Not only must the teacher 
control herself, but teach her pupils self-control. 
Phases of school discipline are ever before the teacher. 
A principal in a graded school said Miss S-was 



FITNESS FOR TEACHING. 21 

a good driller, her pupils liked her and they passed 
fair examinations; but in the twenty years they have 
taught together she never sent a class to the principal 
that he could trust, and it took a whole year’s train¬ 
ing to counteract the laxness shown when the pupils 
came from her room. 

No class is well-governed who will take advantage 
of a teacher when her back is turned. It is not enough 
to tell pupils they must be trusted. They must be 
taught what honor means, and trained in things honor¬ 
able. 


II. 


FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. 

This is an age of teaching. Hundreds of young 
people are anxious to teach school. During their 
school days, they have seen the bright side of the 
teacher’s life; they have observed that the teacher’s 
work is pleasant, so far as they can understand it, 
and to be associated with children day after day, 
something desirable; they have noticed that the teacher, 
worthy the name, is foremost in society, in church 
work, and in young people’s meetings; and these facts 
stimulate many of the young in the preparation for 
teaching. A young person, ambitious to enter the 
profession, attends an examination, passes it fairly 
well, and receives a certificate to teach. This ordeal 
over, there is no rest of mind or body until this 
young person is elected to teach some particular 
school. She supposes after obtaining a position she 
would be happy, but awakens to the fact that now 
she has something real to worry about. She worries, 
fearing she will not be successful; her worries, how¬ 
ever, are forebodings merely, founded on her own 
imagination of difficulties that she may never meet. 
This teacher begins to look forward to the first day of 
school with many misgivings; she hopes to make a 
good beginning. Experienced teachers have told her 
that the success of the year depends largely upon what 
is done the first few days; in fact, it has become an 


22 


FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. 


2 3 


axiom among teachers that the “ first day of school ” 
is the most important of any single day during the 
term. The impression the teacher makes upon the 
children during the first hours of her acquaintance 
will be lasting: if unfavorable, it will take months to 
overcome the evil influence; if favorable, they will 
be a continual blessing. The quick perception of chil¬ 
dren leads them to detect a fault or virtue in the 
teacher very quickly. 

While young teachers, especially, look forward to 
the first day with mingled feelings of fear and pleasure, 
and with an enthusiasm that knows no bounds, they 
very often fail to recognize the simple conditions which 
are necessary to make the opening day a success. It 
is the design of this chapter to designate in a simple 
manner the essential work of the “ opening day of 
school.” 

Be Prompt .— The teacher should make it her duty 
to be the first at the school building on the opening 
day of the term. If she arrives late on the first morn¬ 
ing, she will place herself at a serious disadvantage 
with the children. They will come early expecting 
to find the new teacher there to bid them a welcome. 
A teacher who goes late to school even once a week 
can not very well enforce the punctual attendance of 
pupils. When the hour arrives for calling the school 
together, the teacher should be prompt in that also. 
Children are quick to notice any failure or readiness 
to act on the part of the teacher. She who moves in 
a hesitating or an uncertain manner, showing any in¬ 
decision in action, will fail to secure the confidence and 
admiration of pupils. On the other hand, children 


24 


FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. 


admire the teacher who knows what to do, and does 
it on time. 

In recitations, the teacher must be ready and prompt 
to assemble the class. The teaching should be ani¬ 
mated and interesting. Nothing so completely de¬ 
moralizes a school or makes a recitation so worthless 
as the teacher who is dull and incompetent. 

In dismissing for intermission, or for the day, the 
same punctuality should be exercised. Some teachers 
make a virtue of keeping their pupils' beyond the 
required hours; but if those teachers were punctual 
in all duties of the day, there would be no necessity for 
prolonging the time after the regular hour for dis¬ 
missal. 

Be Courteous .— This does not mean that the teacher 
shall be effusive in her greetings of pupils, but pleasant 
and affable. If the teacher can not act pleasantly the 
first day of school, she had better remain away. All 
teachers should enter the schoolroom with a bright, 
happy face,— one that is worn when they meet a num¬ 
ber of congenial friends, for that is just what the 
children ought to be, and they should be greeted with 
as much grace of manner as wouldTe shown a number 
of distinguished guests in a drawing-room. 

The teacher should strive to create a home-feeling 
in the schoolroom, and to be as courteous to pupils 
as to nearest friends. Teachers should never make 
an effort to become familiar with their pupils. Chil¬ 
dren do not like sentiment, but enjoy being treated 
kindly. Many teachers have failed because of famil¬ 
iarity with pupils. There is an old saying that 
“ familiarity breeds contempt,” and it is nowhere so 


FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. 


25 


true as in the schoolroom. Within certain bounds the 
teacher ought to be free with the pupils, but there is 
a certain dignity belonging to the profession of teach¬ 
ing which must be held sacred by the teacher. This 
will not hinder the teacher from greeting the pupils 
pleasantly. There is a courtesy of manner which 
should characterize every true teacher. It does not 
consist in bowing according to the most approved plan, 
but is the exercise of real kindness. A spirit of polite¬ 
ness helps the teacher to cultivate true courtesy in his 
pupils. 

Two teachers were walking along the street, when 
they met a number of boys, who raised their hats and 
caps to the young lady. “ Who are these boys that 
pay you such attention?” inquired the gentleman of 
his companion. “ They are my pupils,” answered the 
lady. “ Your pupils,” exclaimed the gentleman. 
“How do you teach them to be so polite? If my 
pupils see me coming, and notice they are going to 
meet me, they cross the street to avoid me.” “ I can 
not tell,” said the lady. “ I never say anything to them 
about being polite. I always bow to them, and they 
are always ready to return the courtesy.” 

The whole secret of such actions on the part of 
pupils grew out of the spirit of kindness the teacher 
had shown her pupils in the classroom. By her sympa¬ 
thetic, earnest manner she appealed to the best that 
was in the boys under her care, and aroused their man¬ 
liness. A gentle nature in the schoolroom is a potent 
factor in school work. It will influence lives, and 
develop bright characters; while on the other hand, 
a crabbed, sour, dominating nature will hinder the 


26 


FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. 


proper development and growth of the child’s powers. 
The sight of a gloomy countenance acts very unfavor¬ 
ably on the nervous system, and consequently upon the 
mental and moral development of children. When a 
young lady was about to take up the work of teaching 
for the first time, she asked what advice I would give 
her. My answer was, “ Be firm, but kind, and don’t 
get bossy.” By this was meant that she was not to 
become domineering. The young teacher did not 
understand the significance of the advice at that time, 
and possibly thought it uncalled for. During the year 
I asked one of the young teacher’s pupils how she liked 

Miss B- for a teacher, and her reply was good to 

hear, and a monument to the teacher’s name: “ I like 
her,” said the pupil, “ because she is never cross.” 
The child spoke as if it were an uncommon thing for a 
teacher not to be cross. At the end of the year’s work, 
however, this teacher became conscious that she was 
fast becoming less gentle and more domineering. 

The living example of the teacher is more potent 
than much learning, for it does not make so much 
difference what a child learns as from whom he learns 
it. True courtesy can be taught more efficiently by 
example than by giving lectures on the subject. A 
mother noticed a remarkable change in the conduct 
of her seven-year-old son. From being rough, noisy, 
and discourteous, he had suddenly become one of the 
gentlest and most considerate little fellows in the 
town. His mother naturally inferred that his school 
life had something to do with the change in deport¬ 
ment,—possibly due to his teacher’s instruction; so 
she said to him: “ Miss Smith teaches you to be 



FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. 


27 


polite, does she?” “ No,” said the boy, “ she never 
says a word about being polite.” The mother was 
puzzled, and all the more when further questioning 
brought only more emphatic denials that the teacher 
had ever given her pupils lessons in good manners. 

“ Well, then,” the mother asked, finally, “ if Miss 
Smith does not say anything, what does she do?” 
“ She doesn’t do anything,” persisted the boy. “ She 
just walks around, and we feel polite.” 

That was enough. It was the effect of being rather 
than doing. “ The personal equation which must be 
reckoned in estimating the molding force of any life,” 
is to the teacher what inspiration is to the inventor 
and the scientist. 

Be Active .— The opening exercises of the first day 
of school should be simple, brief, and positive. A few 
words of introduction should be spoken by the teacher. 
Too much talk the first or any day will weaken the 
teacher in the eyes of the pupils. The more a teacher 
talks the less she is heeded. A young teacher asked 
a friend who had been observing the work done, what 
criticism she had to make, and the reply was, “ You 
talk too much. When you say a thing, you say it as 
if you do not think it would be obeyed, and it is not.” 
The teacher who does not carefully study her words 
is apt to say something that will bring upon her a just 
rebuke. Too much talking is a real fault in a teacher. 
Much of the trouble which teachers experience in the 
schoolroom is brought about by not following Sol¬ 
omon’s advice to “ bridle the tongue.” 

Those acute little readers of human nature before 
the teacher, will find out any weakness very soon, and 


28 


FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. 


will honor the teacher who does not attempt to tell all 
she knows the first day. The attempt to bewilder 
others by knowing too much is a weakness. A mer¬ 
chant does not put all his gpods in window or show 
case. 

The moment the opening exercises are over, both 
teacher and pupils should begin work of some kind. 
Pupils should not be given opportunity to sit eyeing 
the teacher, who in turn will grow restless and uneasy. 
It is the law of the child’s nature to be active, and 
especially in doing work that means something to 
them. A bright little girl in a city went to school 
for the first time with a happy heart. On returning 
home at noon, when questioned as to how she liked 
to go to school, she replied that she “ didn’t like it at 
all, because the teacher kept her stringing little chunks 
of wood all morning,” referring to a kindergarten 
exercise. Every careful observer of children knows 
that their minds can not be kept very long on 
one object. The skilled teacher knows that she must 
often change the work. She must have a mind fertile 
in resources; she also knows how far to drill on one 
point in order to fix the thought in the child’s mind, 
and at the same time not tire him out. 

The wise teacher will enlist the help of the pupils 
in the details of the first day. Many a mischievous 
boy and giggling girl have been disarmed because the 
teacher called them into service the moment they were 
expected to create a sensation. To illustrate: A young 
lady was called to take a position in a school where 
three teachers had resigned because of an absolute 
failure to maintain order. This fourth teacher was 


FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. 


29 


a slight little creature with a bright face. The principal 
introduced her to the room, no doubt thinking that 
she would soon go the way of her predecessors. When 
the door closed behind him as he left the room, the 
new teacher said to the forty children present that she 
hoped to get acquainted with them at once. George 
Walker, the leader in all the mischief in that room, 
feeling that something was expected of him by his 
schoolmates, said to the boy over by the stove, in a 
voice that could be heard plainly in all parts of the 
room, “ I guess she’ll get acquainted with us soon 
enough.” A laugh went round the room as usual, but 
the young teacher did not seem to notice the interrup¬ 
tion. Asking the‘children to write their names on 
slips of paper which she had prepared, the teacher 
walked leisurely around until she came to George 
Walker’s desk, and with a smile that would win any 
girl or boy, said, “ George, you may collect the slips 
of paper for me.” He begged off, but she insisted that 
he must at least help her. The children were startled 
when they saw George rise to help the teacher in col¬ 
lecting the papers. The little teacher had conquered 
the mischievous boy without his knowing it, and he 
became the champion of good order in that room. 
The good impression made on the children that day 
was a great step in the teacher’s work. By her gentle¬ 
ness and ready sympathy in their child-life, the chil¬ 
dren were convinced that she was a friend that could 
lead them into a new world of language and history, 
and do it easily and cheerfully. As every teacher 
should do, this teacher went through the days looking 
for the best in every pupil, and she found it. 


30 


FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. 


Human activities and emotions are natural forces, 
and can no more be destroyed than any physical force; 
and that teacher is greatest who makes the most of 
the pupil’s own particular genius. It is not the 
province of the teacher to transform the pupil’s mind 
into anything unnatural, but it is her duty to train him 
to be strong in his own powers. 

Be Firm .— Many teachers fail in their government 
owing to an undecided, vacillating manner of proced¬ 
ure. Children will grow to despise a teacher who 
shows a weakness in government, while they yield 
readily to a clear-headed, kind-hearted, resolute per¬ 
son who knows what she wants, and takes proper steps 
to secure it. The school government is best that shows 
itself the least. Some schools are governed to death. 
Order for the sake of order is against human nature. 
Children will chafe under harsh government, and 
would rebel if they dared. Good government should 
be mild, but have plenty of strength behind it. The 
teacher’s personality must be felt. The commonest 
form of poor government is largely owing to the teach¬ 
er’s feeble.personal influence. The teacher’s life has 
a marked influence over her pupils’ lives. " If she 
meets the changes of the day bravely, she will soon 
realize what power she may have over her pupils.” 
If she can be self-possessed and calm in time of dis¬ 
order or trouble in the schoolroom, she will soon show 
what a factor she is in school work. The storms that 
strike the teacher in her school work are few; when 
they do come, firmness is the greatest element in de¬ 
stroying their force. The teacher must not become 
disheartened and think that every day is full of trou- 


FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. 


3 1 


ble, since another will dawn which may be entirely 
different and full of interest and pleasure to pupils 
and teacher. It is a sad experience for a teacher to 
want to desert the post of duty before the term closes; 
for to enter upon a second term’s work with a feeling 
of disgust is not only dangerous to the reputation of 
the teacher, but full of evil results to the children. 

Be Yourself .— The teacher should endeavor to be 
herself the first day of school. While to her it is one 
of the most important days,— a critical period in her 
life,— to the world it is only an ordinary day. She 
should remember that the continuance of the gov¬ 
ernment does not depend upon her success or failure. 
“ Be master of the situation; ” do not try to act like 
some one you have seen teach, or some one you have 
read about. Avoid being fussy. Do not work in 
a hurried manner, as if trying to catch up, but show 
a calm, earnest spirit in the work. If a teacher stands 
before a class, bewildered and obtuse, the pupils will 
be quick to detect it and her power is soon destroyed. 
The pupils watch the new teacher, and make mental 
records of her ability to control herself; and if she 
is ill prepared, and is easily disturbed, will be at 
the mercy of her pupils. 

The teacher must be at ease, and thus impress 
upon the pupils something of the bearing and char¬ 
acter of the position she occupies. This will create 
in the minds of the pupils a favorable impression of 
school and teacher. 

The irrepressible Micawber, in Dickens, became a 
hero and a philosopher, not from any marked achieve¬ 
ments of talent, but purely from the man’s supreme 


32 


FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. 


ability to face the most unexpected reverses with the 
same serene, unruffled countenance. Adopt no one’s 
method without having made it your own. “ Bor- 
rowed garments never fit well.” The ability to give 
live instruction by an original method is a source 
of evident power. Friction in the schoolroom arises 
when the teacher wants things done without having 
made them attractive, or gives work that is too hard 
for the average ability of his class. 

Nothing so discourages the pupil as not to fully 
understand what is being done in the classroom. On 
the other hand, many a dull boy or girl, under the in¬ 
spiration of a new teacher, has found himself in pos¬ 
session of the most unsuspected gifts. 


III. 


ART OF QUESTIONING. 

The effect and success of teaching depends more 
upon the skill and judgment with which a teacher asks 
questions than on any other single thing. A teacher 
may be scholarly, skillful in many ways, happy in the 
choice of illustration, and yet be inefficient as teacher, 
because unable to frame suitable and interesting ques¬ 
tions. 

The art of asking questions is not all that is im¬ 
portant, but that the questions should be intelligent 
ones, leading pupils out into fields of knowledge, and 
inspiring them with greater activities in their work. 

There are several kinds of questions which must 
be recognized in school work: — 

I. Preliminary questions, or those which lead up 
to the lesson in hand. All knowledge acquired by 
pupils must be gotten to a great extent through the 
exercise of their own powers, and must rest upon 
that which they already know as a foundation. Pre¬ 
liminary questions are for the purpose of arousing 
thought, and stirring up their former knowledge, and 
preparing the mind to receive new truths. 

II. Harmonizing questions follow closely after the 
preliminary ones, and are for the purpose of finding 
out how well pupils agree upon previous lessons; to 
ascertain if any indefinite knowledge exists, and to 

3 33 


34 ART OF QUESTIONING. 

get all minds to working in the same channel of 
thought. 

III. Questions of examinations are those by which 
the teacher tests the work of his pupils, by finding 
out whether it has been thoroughly learned and under¬ 
stood. Some teachers have erroneous ideas about 
questions, and think this the only kind. 

Socrates, an old Athenian philosopher, who was 
possibly an expert in asking questions, and who lived 
in the midst of a keen, cultivated people, used all these 
forms of questions in his teaching. Some of his ques¬ 
tions seemed foolish in themselves, but they were to 
lead on to some truth. Socrates believed the great 
impediment to possession of accurate knowledge to 
be the indefinite information which his people had ac¬ 
quired, and that the first thing to do was to prepare 
the mind for the reception of truth by finding out 
what the person already knew, as the foundation on 
which to build. So in the teaching of to-day, the 
teacher by some preliminary questions finds out what 
the children already know, and whether that knowl¬ 
edge is worthy of possession or whether it is a dry 
bone. The pupils of a careless teacher will possess 
much indefinite information, for a part of the class 
will not catch all the lesson that is given. In the exam¬ 
ination of teachers in history, the writer has found a 
great percentage of teachers who could not state the 
“Compromise of 1850” properly; on one occasion 
fifty-two out of eighty-eight teachers who were being 
examined got some part of the “ Compromise ” wrong. 

Some children in each class, unless the teacher is 
very watchful and careful, will miss getting all the 


ART OF QUESTIONING. 35 

facts of the lesson. This leads us to the first deduc¬ 
tion in questioning, that — 

I. The Language Should Be Simple .— Teachers 
should cultivate simplicity of language; it must be 
adapted to the ability of children. A teacher coming 
before her class of small children to give a lesson on 
the human body, began by asking, “ What does the 
science of Physiology teach? ” Naturally the only 
result of such a question would be to bring forth on 
the faces of the children a vacant stare. People com¬ 
plain sometimes that children make terrible blunders. 
A real bright lady called on Ethel’s mother. She 
rang the bell, and when Ethel came to the door, the 
lady said: — 

“ Are your papa and mama at home ? ” 

“ Yes, they are both at home,” said Ethel. 

“ Are they engaged ? ” asked the lady. 

“ Engaged,” said Ethel, “ why, yes; they are mar¬ 
ried. I’m their little girl.” 

When the lady got home, she laughed as she told 
her children about Ethel’s blunder — when that care¬ 
less mother had done all the blundering herself. 

Too frequently the teacher leads the pupil into 
deep water, and is not able to help him out. It is 
so easy to get beyond the child’s comprehension, es¬ 
pecially in the use of language. This is illustrated 
by the Sunday-school teacher who could not adapt her 
language to her pupils, and yet blamed the class for 
not answering her questions. She said to a friend, 
“ They are a stupid lot; they can’t understand the 
English language.” 

“ Perhaps you don’t say things that they can under¬ 
stand,” said the friend. 


36 


ART OF QUESTIONING. 


“ Yes, I do; I talk plain English, and they just sit 
and stare,” said the teacher. 

“ I will go, and hear you teach next Sunday,” said 
the friend. 

“ Well,” said the teacher, “ you will be convinced 
that they are the stupidest children the church ever 
undertook to save.” 

The friend was present on the next Sunday, and 
unnoticed, took notes of what transpired. The lesson 
was about “ Paul’s Journey to Damascus and His 
Conversion.” 

The pupils were eight to ten years of age, and ap¬ 
peared ready and attentive at the beginning of the 
lesson. 

The teacher’s first question was, “ What was the 
ostensible purpose of Paul’s visit to Damascus? ” No 
answer; she tried again. 

“ What was the obvious intention of Paul in ar¬ 
ranging a journey to Damascus at this time?” Still 
no response. Once more she tried, this time, empha¬ 
sizing each word so they could not help but under¬ 
stand. 

“ What relation, connection, coincidence, or corre¬ 
spondence was there between Paul’s visit to Damas¬ 
cus and the remarkable impetus the Christian religion 
received, acquired, and experienced soon after this 
memorable visit ? ” 

Her question was not answered. When she reached 
home, she declared that she was “ amazed, confounded, 
and disgusted,” saying further that she could never 
understand why she is “ invariably assigned to the 
most unappreciative portion of the juvenile depart¬ 
ment.” 


ART OF QUESTIONING. 


37 


How often has the teacher to remember that she 
is speaking to children, and should use language which 
they can understand. 

2. Avoid Indefinite Questions .— Indefinite ques¬ 
tions lead to indefinite thoughts and knowledge. The 
teacher may understand her own questions, but the 
pupils may not understand them; she asks such a ques¬ 
tion, and then waits for an answer. The children 
can not answer, for they do not understand it; they 
are bewildered and silent. Some pupil, bolder than 
the rest, makes a guess at the answer. If he happens 
to answer correctly, he will try that plan again; if he 
misses it, he is severely criticised. It is an easy mat¬ 
ter for children to fall into the habit of guessing at 
answers to questions which are indefinite. Such ques¬ 
tions foster in the child a habit of not meeting a query 
frankly. When a teacher finds her question is not 
understood, she should change the form of it. One 
form of questions grows monotonous. In a certain 
school where there were several teachers employed, 
one was called by the pupils, “ What do you under¬ 
stand? ” This nickname was applied to him because 
he used the phrase so much in his classes; as, “ Mary, 
what do you understand by an adverb?” “ John, 
what do you understand by a preposition ? ” etc. Any 
teacher who is in the habit of using a set phrase like 
this ought to break off from it, for it is aimless. Some 
teachers could learn much from children in the line 
of asking questions. The child is a born interroga¬ 
tion point; a bundle of questions; and this infinite 
questioning is the budding of knowledge. As the 
mind unfolds, it searches more widely and eagerly 
for truth, and is never satisfied. 


38 


ART OF QUESTIONING. 


3. Questions Requiring “ Yes” and “No ” for an 
Answer Should Seldom Be Asked. — If the teacher 
desires to arouse thought, an effort on the part of the 
pupil, she must ask questions that require full answers. 
In a room visited by a critic teacher, this dialogue was 
heard: — 

“Well, James, have you finished your problem?” 
“ Yes, ma’am; ” “ Did you get 4^2 for an answer? ” 
“ Yes, ma’am; ” “ You reduced 6 2-3 to an improper 
fraction, did you? ” “ Yes, ma’am; ” “ Then you re¬ 

duced 2 1-6 to an improper fraction, did you? ” “ Yes, 
ma’am;” “You then reduced the improper fractions 
to a common denominator, did you?” “Yes, 
ma’am;” “Then you found the difference between 
the fractions?” “Yes, ma’am.” “And you all got 
4^2 for a result, did you?” “Yes, ma’am.” Every 
question received the same answer. Such questions 
elicit no thought, no effort, and all interest in class 
would soon die out — two possible answers, “ yes,” 
and “ no,” and they do not serve any useful purpose. 
Such questions only require a repetition of the infor¬ 
mation already given, and children soon tire of ques¬ 
tions so near alike in form. 

Every question asked ought to require, on the part 
of the pupil, an effort of the memory or the imagina¬ 
tion or judgment — possibly all these combined. 

Another serious difficulty arising from asking ques¬ 
tions which can be answered by “ yes ” and “ no,” is 
that all will answer together, or in a simultaneous 
manner. A group of children answering in this way 
may appear very bright and intelligent, while the sep¬ 
arate members may be careless and half interested. 
There are times when all answering together in concert 


ART OF QUESTIONING. 


39 


is perfectly proper, but there is danger in the practice, 
in that we are unable to test the individual pupil. 

4. Questions Should Follow in Logical Order .— 
Each question ought to, at least, seem to grow out 
of the answer which preceded it. Much of the force 
or value of the teacher’s work is lost in loose, uncon¬ 
nected lists of questions. 

If facts are gathered in a way that will confuse the 
learner, they will never be definitely fixed in the mind; 
so that question should be linked in such a way that 
the answer given will be a sure development of the 
subject in hand. In reading newspaper reports of tri¬ 
als in court, people have wondered at the plain, 
straightforward evidence given by witnesses. It 
grows out of the fact that lawyers are shrewd ques¬ 
tioners. The evidence would appear broken were it 
not that the witnesses are asked questions in a logical 
way, and therefore their evidence is logical, and seems 
like a complete story. 

The true questioner forms one unbroken chain of 
inquiries, reaching from what the child knows to what 
she wishes him to know; she has a definite place for 
each question. Disorderly questioning should be 
avoided: as the general plans a campaign, sees before 
him the far-off end, then marshals all his powers to 
reach that end, so the teacher must aim to see the 
end of the recitation from the beginning. The logical 
questioner has an interested class always, for she adds 
to the logic of the questions, animation; so that the 
interest does not die out as in those classes where the 
questions are asked in a dull, heavy manner. The dull¬ 
est child will become interested under the influence of 
a spirited questioner. 


40 


ART OF QUESTIONING. 


5. Book Questions Should Be Avoided .—This state¬ 
ment possibly needs some modification. The writer 
means that teachers should not read the questions from 
the book when hearing a recitation. Book questions 
are good as models, but each teacher should formulate 
her own questions, since they could be adapted to the 
class and be more attractive. The teacher who reads 
the questions from the book loses the effect of looking 
into the eyes of her pupils. A sermon read may be 
profound and logical, clothed in the choicest language, 
but it will not have the effect upon an audience, nor 
be as useful, as a much inferior effort when a sermon 
is delivered without the manuscript. So in asking 
questions. The questions in the book may be better 
because studied, but the teacher’s own questions seem 
alive, and not a-mass of dead material. 

6. Questions Should Make Pupils Think .— That 
is always the best question which stimulates the 
mind to act. Many questions, therefore, ought to 
begin with “ why; ” such questions arouse the minds 
of children and leads them to reason and arrive at 
conclusions. 

The aim in asking questions should be to awaken 
the intellects of the pupils, and the “ mind of the child 
is best opened by way of the mouth.” At one time 
in the history of school work the child committed to 
memory all the lessons, and the teacher did little else 
than hear the pupil recite the lesson as would a par¬ 
rot : the later tendency and danger is that the teacher 
recites the lesson, and the pupil becomes a passive lis¬ 
tener. This is from one extreme to the other. If 
we really want to arouse thought on the part of the 
pupil, we must give him something to do and a chance 
to think. 


IV. 


INTERPRETING THE ACTIONS OF PUPILS. 

In Oriental countries, in the times of the old proph¬ 
ets, he was considered q wise person who could inter¬ 
pret dreams and signs and other phenomena. Such 
persons were held in great esteem by their fellowmen. 

What was true of the skill of the Oriental peoples 
is also true of the real interpreter in the schoolroom 
to-day. To be able to explain to our own satisfaction 
the actions of pupils under our care, and to be able 
to do justice to all is a task which at times assumes 
large proportions. We may in our short-sigh cedness 
think an action to mean just the opposite from which 
it was intended. Sometimes it is as hard for a teacher 
to interpret an action of a child as it is for a child to 
interpret the actions of an older person. A person 
may be as easily mistaken in his interpretation of an 
action as was the naughty boy who eluded punish-* 
ment by creeping under the bed where his mother could 
not reach him. Shortly after, his father came in, and 
when told of the state of affairs, crawled on his hands 
and knees under the bed in search of his son, to punish 
him. To the father’s astonishment he was greeted 
with the inquiry, “ Is she after you, too, Pap ? ” 

A great many young people who enter the profes¬ 
sion of teaching, expect to find difficulties all through 
the'term, and therefore they interpret every little look 
or motion of children as something which means de- 

41 


42 INTERPRETING THE ACTIONS OF PUPILS. 


fiance or mockery; they make seeming troubles too 
prominent; things which ought to be regarded as just 
little incidents along the way, are taken as intentional 
misdemeanors on the part of the pupils. I have read 
of a Chinese official, who, sent on a special errand to 
Europe, gave orders that a hundred and fifty pounds 
of salt should be placed in his luggage, lest he should 
find no salt in European countries. 

There are multitudes of foreboding teachers who 
have weighted themselves just as unwisely. Our 
imaginations help us sometimes to magnify the ac¬ 
tions of children under our charge, and unless we 
are guarded in our judgment we will think many 
times that pupils mean to be mischievous or to annoy 
us, when really they are utterly ignorant of doing 
anything wrong. Teachers worry over the actions of 
children sometimes, whereas if they knew the real 
motive of their actions, there would not be any worry 
whatever. 

A farmer living in Pennsylvania plowed around 
a rock in one of his fields for five years. He had 
broken a mowing-machine knife, a hay rake, and a 
wagon wheel against it, besides losing his temper and 
the use of the ground in which it lay, all because he 
supposed it was such a large rock that it would take 
too much time and labor to remove it. One year 
when he began to plow the field for corn, and fear¬ 
ing he might break his plow or cultivator against the 
rock, he took a crowbar and poked around it to find 
out its real size, and it was one of the surprises of his 
life to find that it was little more than two feet long. 
It was standing on one edge, and so light in weight 
that he lifted it into the wagon without help. 


INTERPRETING THE ACTIONS OF PUPILS. 43 


Imagine the farmer plowing around that stone for 
five years, wondering all the while whether it was too 
large a rock to move, only to learn that he could han¬ 
dle it with ease. 

Teachers shiver and shrink at something which 
does not exist, until a seeming trouble becomes al¬ 
most a real one. One half the terror would be gone 
or disappear if the teacher had enough courage to in¬ 
vestigate the matter. “ The trouble which lies down 
with us at night and confronts us on awakening in 
the morning is not the trouble we have faced, but 
the trouble whose proportions we do not know.” I 
have found in my own experience that the things which 
have given me the most worry are the things which 
never happened, but which my imagination led me to 
believe would happen. I came very near making a 
great mistake once during my second term of teach¬ 
ing. It was in an ungraded school, and before I had 
learned much of the language of interpretation. 
Among the pupils was a large girl, who was rather 
hard to manage. She came to school one morning 
with a long frock on — one that touched the floor all 
around. I interpreted the act in this way: “ Now she 
wants to worry me because I kept her in at recess 
yesterday, and she has worn her mother’s dress this 
morning in order to have some fun, and create a sen¬ 
sation, which, in turn, will make me trouble.” My 
first thought was to send her home to put on her 
own frock; my second was to send for a rod and use 
it upon her for such insolence; then I thought I would 
wait until intermission, and speak to her about it; 
but in the meantime kept my eye on her and watched 
the other children. Sometimes the children in a school 


44 INTERPRETING THE ACTIONS OF PUPILS. 


will help a teacher interpret the actions of others. 
My pupils helped me out at that time. I discovered 
one thing which was useful to me; it was that the 
girl had not confided to any of the other children her 
design in wearing the long frock, for they seemed 
to embarrass her very much by watching her in her 
new uniform. This was a useful discovery to me, and 
led me to study the case more thoroughly. There 
are some things that come to us like an inspiration, 
and there flashed through my mind a thought of in¬ 
valuable worth, and the truth dawned on me like a 
flash; namely, “ That there comes a period in a girl’s 
life when she changes the length of her skirts.” How 
thankful I was that I did not act upon my first im¬ 
pulse or certain interpretation of her act, for I cer¬ 
tainly was so much mistaken. I have often thought 
about how much humiliated she would have been had 
I criticised her publicly; how it might have changed 
the whole course of her life, and she might never 
have become the noted physician she now is. 

There are times when we need to be very careful in 
our interpretations of the acts of pupils. How much 
judgment, skill, tact, and knowledge it takes to teach 
school, and make no mistakes. A few years ago, a 
teacher gave an Irish boy a sound thrashing for laugh¬ 
ing outloud in school. The boy was sitting at his 
desk at work on some lesson when suddenly he burst 
into a laugh, astonishing the whole school. The teacher 
asked him what he meant by such conduct. The boy 
was very much ashamed of the act, and asked the 
teacher’s pardon, saying he was just thinking what a 
mistake the author of the book had made in the read- 


INTERPRETING THE ACTIONS OF PUPILS. 45 


ing lesson, which said that a man “ jumped from a 
bridge and landed in the water.” “ I don’t see,” said 
the boy “ how a man could ‘ land in water.’ ” His 
laughing was purely spontaneous, and a teacher of 
judgment would have been proud of a boy so manly 
as to apologize, and who had the Irish ability to see 
the seeming contradiction in the statement. Our best 
judgment and skill must be continually utilized if we 
get clear conceptions of pupils’ actions. 

If we go into a garden and look for cobwebs, we 
will find them; but if we look for flowers and fruit, 
they are to be found also. If we go into the school¬ 
room to look for good traits of character, we shall 
find them; but if we are looking for defects and trou¬ 
ble continually, they can be found. 

A Yankee pilot made an excellent reply to the owner 
of a Mississippi river steamboat. The boat was ly¬ 
ing at New Orleans, and the Yankee applied for the 
vacant post of pilot, saying that he could give satisfac¬ 
tion, provided they were looking for a man about his 
size. 

“ Your size will do well enough,” said the owner 
of the boat as he looked at the rugged build of the 
applicant, with some amusement, “ but do you know 
about the river — where the snags and rocks are ? ” 

“ Well, I’m pretty well acquainted with the river,” 
said the Yankee, “ but I don’t know where the snags 
are; it would take too much time and trouble to find 
every rock and snag in the river.” 

“ Don’t know where the snags are! ” said the 
owner, with surprise; “then how do you expect to 
get a position as pilot on this river? ” 


4& INTERPRETING THE ACTIONS OF PUPILS. 


“ Well,” said the Yankee, “ I don’t know where 
they are, but I know where they ain’t, and that is 
where I calculate to do my sailing.” 

What is true of the pilot is true of the teacher and 
his work. Go where the snags are not found in the 
work; find the deep water, it is the safest in school 
work. There will be enough to do in the school¬ 
room without hunting out the snags and running 
against them just to find out their true nature. If 
teachers expect to become true pilots of the young, 
they must know where to guide them, and how to 
take them through the depths of knowledge. 

Good, definite teaching does more toward breaking 
down the snags and obliterating obstructions in the 
way than any other agent. Plain, definite teaching 
is the one thing needful above all others. If pupils 
do not understand much of the instruction, they will 
not be interested. The principal told the janitor of 
a certain school building that he would write any 
directions on the blackboard before leaving in the 
evenings. One evening the janitor found on the board, 
“Empty the waste-baskets every day;” at another 
time, “ Be sure to get all chalk off the floor in pri¬ 
mary room.” For the second time the janitor found 
this part of a sentence on the board, “ Find greatest 
common divisor —” “ Is it possible,” said the janitor, 
“ that that thing is lost again? ” 

Sometimes children see teachers write things on 
the blackboard which are not definite to them, and 
they are as dumfounded as was the janitor. Children 
hear teachers say things in the recitation which are 
not intelligible to them, and they grow restless, im- 


INTERPRETING THE ACTIONS OF PUPILS. 47 


patient, and sometimes even become troublesome. It 
is not the pupil’s fault always if they are restless and 
noisy. If these conditions exist, the teacher should 
stop teaching long enough to inquire of himself, “ Why 
is my school uninterested and noisy ? ” “ Is it be¬ 

cause of the natural tendencies of their minds to idle¬ 
ness? ” “ Are the surrounding conditions unfavorable 
for study, or am I not instructing in a clear, definite 
manner?” With all the facilities which our great 
country gives us in the way of training schools, col¬ 
leges, and normal schools, every teacher should be 
prepared for the work before entering the schoolroom. 

Since we have begun to study the child more, and 
the book in a different way, trying to adapt our teach¬ 
ing to the abilities and tendencies and environments, 
we have made great advancement. 

The successful teacher will soon recognize the child 
of the forest, the child of the street, the child of the 
farm, and the child of the shop, the undeveloped child, 
the degenerate child, and the precocious child. He 
will have all the phases of character, every form of 
physical development, and all kinds of dispositions. 
The interested teacher will study with peculiar interest 
each class of children. Teachers are improving along 
this line. Our methods are a great improvement over 
old ones. Our dealings with children on a mental and 
moral basis are superior to the old method of settling 
everything on a physical basis. Teachers used to apply 
remedies for mischief and bad conduct with about as 
much judgment as the Hungarian who saw that Amer¬ 
icans put Paris green on the potato vines to kill the 
bugs. When he accidentally swallowed a potato bug, he 


48 INTERPRETING THE ACTIONS OF PUPILS. 


immediately ate a teaspoonful of Paris green to kill it. 
The bug was killed, but Hungarian and bug were both 
buried in the same cemetery. I have heard of teachers 
who applied remedies for misbehavior which were 
really worse than the offenses themselves. 

Thoughtless, ill-tempered teachers subject pupils to 
personal indignities that are positively barbaric. In 
one school where pupils were detected chewing gum, 
they were required to give up their gum. The pel¬ 
lets were stuck together as fast as they were collected. 
Afterward the gum chewers were required to break 
off fragments taken from the mass, and chew it. In 
several cases it caused nausea and vomiting. Children 
in that school guilty of using improper language were 
required to chew bits of soap, in order to wash out 
the stains of impure language. It is enough to say 
that no teacher can “ employ these methods of punish¬ 
ment without suffering degradation of character.” 

There are ways of trampling on a child’s rights 
other than by physical abuse. There is no more effi¬ 
cient instrument of torture than a venomous tongue. 
Ridicule and sarcasm leave deeper wounds than blows; 
they are invisible, but lasting, and may turn a life 
into a wrong channel. A little girl said, “ Our teacher 
don’t whip much, but oh! how she does scold. She 
can say the aw fullest things. I don’t believe she ever 
loved anything in her life.” What teacher would be 
proud of such a reputation ? The very life of a teacher 
impresses itself upon the pupil, this being especially 
noticeable in the changing of teachers where there is 
a marked difference in discipline and methods. A 
little girl’s first teacher had been kind, and had gov- 


INTERPRETING THE ACTIONS OF PUPILS. 49 


erned in that easy manner which characterizes the 
natural teacher, but her second teacher ruled by force ; 
she scolded, pulled, jerked, and punished the pupils 
in many ways, and -naturally had no control. The 
effect produced on the little girl was soon noticeable. 
In playing with her dolls, she scolded, jammed, jerked, 
and slammed them until it was distressing. She never 
had a kind word for one of them, carrying out in her 
play the daily life at school. The next term she had 
a gentle teacher, and there was no more scolding of 
the dolls, but she rather overdid the work in caressing 
them. Most children at some time in their lives need 
punishment, but it should be graded just as well as 
the number work or reading lesson,— it should never 
be humiliating. 

The misinterpretation of the actions of pupils is 
a serious matter. There are children whose motions 
and actions, if not understood, might be severely repri¬ 
manded, and yet not deserve it. To teach a child self- 
control is one of the highest aims of the teacher; that 
is a line of training which ought to be in the minds 
of teachers continually. So many children have never 
learned to control themselves, or even to depend upon 
themselves for anything. 

When General Shafter, the hero of Santiago, com¬ 
manded the forces of that great battle, he had many 
suggestions from his fellow commanders as to how 
the city might be taken; he listened attentively to all 
their suggestions, but finally decided to follow his own 
ideas, which differed materially from the othersfor,” 
said he, “ when I was a boy in school, less than a 
dozen years old, I learned to depend upon myself. Our 
4 


5o INTERPRETING THE ACTIONS OF PUPILS. 


teacher called up the class in mental arithmetic, and 
began putting questions, beginning with the pupil at 
the head of the class, and going down toward the 
foot until someone could give a correct answer. I 
stood near the middle of the class, and next below me 
was a boy who was three years older, and considerably 
ahead of me in the various studies. ‘ How much are 
13 and 9 and 8? ’ the teacher asked. 

“ While one after another of the boys and girls 
ahead of me guessed, and failed to get it right, I fig¬ 
ured out what I thought the answer ought to be. The 
question had almost reached me when I heard the big 
boy just below me whisper, apparently to himself, but 
loud enough for me to hear, 4 twenty-nine, twenty- 
nine, twenty-nine/ 

“ Finally the pupil above me failed to answer cor¬ 
rectly, and then it was my turn. 

Well, Willie/ said the teacher, ‘ let’s see if you 
know the answer.’ 

“ I raised my head proudly, cast a triumphant look 
at those who had 4 fallen ’ on the problem, and said 
so that everybody in the schoolroom could hear me: — 

“ ‘ Twenty-nine.’ 

Next,’ said the teacher, ‘how many are 13 and 
9 and 8 ?’ 

“ ‘ Aw,’ said the big boy just below me, with a 
look of supreme contempt at the rest of us, c thirty! ’ 

“ That was what I had figured it to be myself, and 
when the teacher said ‘ Correct,’ I wanted to fight. 

“ I didn’t assault him, but I made up my mind 
then to depend on my own judgment in the future, and 
ever since then when I have had anything to do, and 


INTERPRETING THE ACTIONS OF PUPILS. 5 


had figured out what I considered the best way to do 
it, I have gone ahead, remembering, when people tried 
to throw me off the track, how that big boy made a 
fool of me in the arithmetic class.” 

Examinations .— During examinations there is dan¬ 
ger on the part of the teachers to misinterpret the 
actions of pupils. Sometimes children glance about 
them, possibly unconsciously, and these glances may 
mislead the teacher. One thing is certain; teachers 
ought to avoid being suspicious. If there is any char¬ 
acteristic which unfits a person to teach young people 
and children, it is the pernicious habit of being sus¬ 
picious. I can not see how any person who “ regards 
everyone a rascal until he proves himself otherwise ” 
can ever expect to instill any good traits into children 
under his charge. I have noticed that the teacher who 
“ trusts no one, but is always suspecting something 
wrong,” will get but poor work from his pupils, and 
create no enthusiasm. Such a one is apt to get a mer¬ 
ited dose sometime. 

A teacher of that class always reminds one of a 
story told by Congressman John Allen, from Mis¬ 
sissippi. Mr. Allen owned a dog, which persisted in 
howling and moaning throughout the night. It was 
all in vain that he tried to stop the animal from indulg¬ 
ing in these outbreaks, and in sheer despair, he con¬ 
sulted an old darkey of the neighborhood, asking his 
opinion as to what ailed the dog. “ When a dog keeps 
on whinin’ and moanin’ and howlin’ like that,” said 
the darkey, “ it means that he scents something he 
can’t locate.” That is the way with suspicious teach¬ 
ers ; they scent imaginary trouble, but can not locate it. 


52 INTERPRETING THE ACTIONS OF PUPILS. 

A boy in one of the schools of our State had a 
teacher who was always watching for notes on days 
of examination, casting suspicious glances on every 
side. One day this teacher gave an examination in 
which he was particularly anxious that no copying be 
done. Among the pupils was this boy, whom the 
teacher had charged with trying to copy or to receive 
help. On this occasion, the boy concluded he would 
get even with the teacher. During the examination, 
the teacher saw the boy take out his watch several 
times and gaze at it. He grew suspicious of the boy 
and his watch. He walked slowly down the aisle, and 
stopping in front of the boy, said, “ Let me see your 
watch.” “ All right, sir,” was the meek reply, as he 
reluctantly handed his watch to the teacher, who 
opened the front lid, and looked somewhat sheepish 
as he read on a paper pasted on the inside of the lid, 
the single word, “ Fooled! ” But he was a shrewd 
man, and was not to be thrown off the track or scent 
so easily. He opened the other lid of the watch. Then 
he was satisfied, for there he read, “ Fooled again!! ” 

It has been found, by continued experience, that 
one of the best methods for training children to obedi¬ 
ence and honesty, is to trust them. 

How miserable would be humanity, if no one 
trusted another. How much business would a mer¬ 
chant do if he were so suspicious of mankind that he 
would trust no one who lives in his village? How 
much power would a minister have over a people whom 
he continually mistrusted ? There could be no progress 
in humanity, education, or religion were it not for 
that beautiful word " trust ” Trust a child if you 


INTERPRETING THE ACTIONS OF PUPILS. $3 


want to make anything of him. A child suspected 
never does his best work any more than a reclaimed 
criminal who is continually watched will ever become 
a good man. 

Children's Expressions .— Teachers sometimes mis¬ 
interpret the expressions of children who occasionally 
say things which may sound rude or impertinent, and 
yet really are not intended to be such. Children do 
not always study their expressions before uttering 
them; they speak spontaneously the thoughts in their 
minds, and although their words may seem harsh, yet 
they are innocent of having done anything wrong. 

A young man said: “ I was teaching in a quiet 
country place. The’ second morning of the term, I 
had leisure to survey my surroundings, and among 
the scanty furniture I espied a three-legged stool. ‘ Is 
this the dunce-block ? 5 I asked a little girl of five. 
The curls nodded, and the lips rippled out, 4 1 suppose 
so, the teacher always sits on it.’ ” The child was 
innocent in her remarks, and possibly never dreamed 
the truth she had spoken. 

The teacher brought that answer upon himself by 
asking the question, and the little girl was not far 
wrong in her answer so far as this particular teacher 
was concerned. Many teachers, under the pretense 
of being excessively bright, get themselves into diffi¬ 
culties, and bring righteous criticism from the pupils. 

A certain schoolmaster used to compare the achieve¬ 
ments of his pupils with the work of noted men in 
their boyhood, much to the scholar’s disadvantage. 

“John, have you solved the problem?” asked the 
teacher. 


54 INTERPRETING THE ACTIONS OF PUPILS. 


“ No, sir,” replied the boy. “ I can’t.” 

“ How old are you, John? ” 

“ Sixteen,” was the answer. 

“ Sixteen,” repeated the wise instructor. “ Six¬ 
teen, and can’t solve a simple problem like that! Why 
sir, at your age George Washington was surveying 
the estate of Lord Fairfax.” 

The pupil looked thoughtful, and said, “ I don’t 
know about that, but when he was as old as our 
teacher, he was President of the United States.” 

The teacher who talks to children in this way will 
find those who will meet him halfway, and he must 
expect to find a pupil occasionally, who, by nature, is 
quick at repartee, or is able to give an answer to which 
the teacher can not object. 

Because of our misinterpretation of the motives of 
children, we are apt to throw around them too many 
prohibitory fences, so much so that some children 
are afraid to speak or move, while others are apt to 
resent the teacher’s rules. They feel hedged in on 
every side. There ought to be a freedom about school 
work that children will enjoy; unless there is, they 
will never have the free use of their faculties and 
powers. 

God has given to children inherent tendencies which 
in large measure determine their growth. The child’s 
mind is not “ inert clay, awaiting the potter’s touch,” 
neither are their minds as wax — easily impressed, 
and the impression readily removed; but they are like 
the blossoms on the trees; under the favorable influ¬ 
ences of the sunshine and warmth of kindly interest 
they will develop into rich fruit, ready for the Mas- 


INTERPRETING THE ACTIONS OF PUPILS. 55 

ter. The child is a living, self-determining creature; 
keep everything out of its way which will retard 
progress. 

But someone may say, “ You certainly would not 
allow your pupils to do just as they please? Would 
you not have trouble were you to allow children to 
follow their own tendencies and inclinations ? ” Now, 
this sounds as if children’s inclinations were all bad, 
while, indeed, their inclinations need not be detri¬ 
mental to good order or proper advancement in their 
work. A part of the teacher’s work is to train the 
tendencies of children into proper ways of living, 
which will lead to self-control. 

Some schools are governed to death. Teachers 
walk around on their tiptoes, peeping here and there, 
looking for what?—“Trouble!” They are sure to 
find it if they seek after it. It does not improve the 
school any to be suspicious and all the time misin¬ 
terpreting the actions of children. The boy contin¬ 
ually watched will plan to play tricks on the teacher; 
a girl continually criticised will never do much good 
in school work. 

Someone has said, “ The reputation for having the 
most orderly school in the district is a fine thing,” 
but if you gain that reputation by eternal nagging, 
growing out of the misinterpretation of the actions 
of children, it isn’t worth the trouble. “ The sar¬ 
castic, unsympathetic teacher may rule her domain like 
a Russian czar, but she will find after a while that 
czars and nihilists go together.” 

The wise man said, “ He that ruleth his spirit is 
greater than he that taketh a city.” 


V. 


“ MANAGING THE BAD BOY.” 

On a sultry August day a gentleman entered a 
street car, and took a seat near a lady. As he sat 
down, he said, referring to some children who were 
making considerable noise near by, “ Those bad boys, 
those bad boys.” “ Yes,” replied the lady, “ and when 
you say ‘ bad boys/ it means all boys; for there are 
no good ones The gentleman took no exception to 
the language whatever, merely remarking, “ I sup¬ 
pose it is natural for a boy to be bad.” 

Both these persons were well dressed, and had the 
appearance of being well-educated and refined people, 
but they certainly did not believe what they said, or 
if they did, very few people believe as they do. Since 
that time many similar remarks have been heard on 
the streets, in the homes, wherever there are boys. For 
twenty years I have been constantly associated with 
boys and girls in school work, and it is my conviction 
that boys are as good by nature as girls, and that 
they would be as good in name if parents cared as 
much for the good name of their sons as they do for 
that of their daughters. In too many instances dis¬ 
crimination is made against the boy. If a man has 
a pup worth two dollars, he will look after it care¬ 
fully, he will not let it run around town at night. If 
it gets out of its kennel, one of the children discov¬ 
ers the misfortune, and comes into the house, saying, 
56 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


5 7 


“ That pup has gotten out again.” In a moment that 
home is all excitement — the whole family start to 
hunt him; they look in the barn, under the porch; they 
whistle and call and shout, but he does not appear. 
The wife going upstairs on an errand, finds the pup 
asleep in the middle of the spare bed; it would be a 
pity to disturb him, he looks so comfortable, so he is 
left alone, and the family are all happy once more, 
because the lost has been found. 

But what about the boy that belongs to the family. 
O, it is very different with him. He is turned loose 
at an early age to go when he pleases, where he 
pleases, do what he pleases, and come home when he 
pleases; and then people wonder whence comes the 
army of tramps and gamblers and drunkards. I have 
no doubt that many boys go to the bad because it 
seems the most desirable place to go. The monoto¬ 
nous life that some boys lead drives them to the bad. 
The boy ought to have an equal chance with the pup 
at least. 

I was entertained in what was designated as one of 
the best families of a town of considerable size. After 
supper, we went into the parlor; that is, the husband, 
wife, three daughters, and myself. 

After a time the conversation turned on music, and 
the daughters must all play for me. They did quite 
well; they desired to perform very well. One of the 
daughters looked at her mother in a longing manner, 
and said, “ Wish George could come in, he plays so 
well; ” the mother gave her daughter a knowing look, 
and said, “ If he comes in, then all the others will 
have to come, and they are-so rough; they will dirty 


58 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY. 5 


the carpet and ruin the furniture.” Is it any wonder 
they were rough? What chance had they to become 
refined ? 

Home is the place above all others where boys may 
learn to be refined and good. Boys, as well as the 
girls, should have a place in the parlor; they ought to 
associate with the company that comes, and be bene¬ 
fited thereby; they should learn some of the real joys 
of society in the home. If we admit that boys are bad, 
still the law of ethics requires us, when under our care, 
to teach them that the world expects something noble 
of them. This is the underlying principle that has 
developed all the real heroes of the past, and is pos¬ 
sibly the greatest factor in preparing our boys for the 
highest type of American citizenship. 

Dr. Steele says: “ The mind grows by what it feeds 
on.” If this be true, it is of vital importance that our 
boys’ minds be occupied with thoughts that will de¬ 
velop truthfulness, honesty, self-respect, self-control, 
and self-reliance. 

But how can a boy grow up to be a truthful and 
honest man when he is taught directly or indirectly 
that he is naturally bad? How can a boy have any 
self-respect when he is forced to the conclusion that 
people expect all the mean things to be done by the 
boys ? How is a boy to gain the power of self-control 
while he is taught that “ it is just like a boy to lose 
his temper, and become perfectly furious;” and how 
is a boy to become self-reliant while he feels that no 
one has any confidence in his ability to do anything 
good? 

Give the boy to understand that something good 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


59 


is expected of him, and he will not disappoint us. 
Boys and girls are not insensible to the estimate that 
is put upon them. A good-sized boy once said, “ My 
teacher does not expect anything good of me, and I 
am too much of a gentleman to disappoint her.” 

If it be true that “ beauty is not so much an inher¬ 
ent quality in the object as in the delighted soul that 
looks upon it,” then it must follow that goodness and 
meanness do not exist so much in boys and girls as in 
the minds of those who judge them; and the bad boy 
does not exist so much in persons as in the minds of 
parent and teacher. No child is thoroughly bad. 
Often it is mere bravado which teachers do not over¬ 
come because of the rush of daily work. The teacher 
sets a boy on the black list, punishes, scolds, and 
antagonizes him, forgetting that to win him is worth 
more than all the rest. 

Children are naturally tender-hearted, and if prop¬ 
erly trained, will avoid doing anything cruel. Chil¬ 
dren are cruel sometimes, not so much from innate 
wickedness as from ignorance of the injury done. If 
you give a boy a hatchet, and he is not instructed how 
to use it, he is as likely to try its edge on a valuable 
cherry tree as on a stick of wood. Tradition tells of 
George Washington’s doing something of this nature. 

In the same way boys and girls often are guilty of 
acts of mischief and wrongdoing simply because they 
do not realize the effect of their acts. 

By “bad boys” we do not mean the vicious, but 
the mischievous boys. Usually the “ bad boy ” is an 
active fellow; he is active or he would not be trouble¬ 
some. He hides an orange that Mary had brought to 


6o 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY. 5 


school; he marks Ruth’s copy book, which makes her 
unhappy; he puts ink on the back of Edward’s hand, 
and while sitting behind Ella, he ties her apron strings 
to the bench, and causes her to be embarrassed when 
she tries to rise. His nature and temperament drive 
him to activity, and his surroundings suggest things 
for him to do. One or two such boys can annoy a 
whole neighborhood, and yet not mean any harm. A 
Kentucky farmer had two such boys. Seeing in the 
weekly paper that an earthquake would occur in the 
community, and fearing the evil effect it might have 
on the nervous systems of his boys, he sent them into 
Illinois to a friend, to remain until after the earth¬ 
quake had passed. The day came, but no earthquake 
appeared, but instead a letter came from the friend in 
Illinois who had the boys in charge, saying; “ Come, 
and get your boys, and send us the earthquake, as we 
think it would be more easily managed than the boys.” 

One of the first essentials of success in any enter¬ 
prise is a right beginning. Many a child has been 
literally spoiled before entering the schoolroom. That 
the boy is bad may not, therefore, be the fault of the 
teacher, but that he should remain bad while under 
her control is altogether another and very different 
thing; for while it is true that parents ought rightly 
to train their children, it is a fact that they do not,, 
because of carelessness, lack of ability, or indifference; 
consequently, the burden falls on the bad boy’s teacher. 
There was a boy who was called the worst boy in a 
school of fifty. His teacher was called the best 
teacher in the community. He was thirteen, she was 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


61 


thirty years of age. Her manner was haughty, his 
was likewise. She would have her own way if a will 
had to be broken to pieces; he was obstinate. 

When but five years of age his mother tried to 
make him say he was sorry for something he had done. 
He would not, for he did not feel so. She whipped 
him, and then asked him if he were sorry; his reply 
was, “ You can beat me because you are the biggest, 
but I’ll never say I’m sorry.” The whipping was con¬ 
tinued, then the question was repeated, “ Will you say 
you are sorry?” “ No,” replied the lad, “I’ll never 
say I’m sorry.” The mother laid aside the stick. She 
was defeated, and always after that he controlled her; 
and now we find him in school with the best teacher 
in the community. 

When two such natures come together, unless great 
wisdom is shown on the part of the teacher, there will 
be trouble. If the teacher had used the best of judg¬ 
ment, she might have turned the strong will in another 
direction, instead of opposing it; but the “ best 
teacher,” who was his first teacher, did not make good 
use of his strong will, and the scenes that followed 
during the first months of their association are inde¬ 
scribable. There are many such children turned over 
to the teacher by parents. 

I. Get Acquainted with “ the Boy .”— Too many 
teachers meet pupils day after day without becoming 
acquainted with them; many punishments are inflicted 
when, if teachers were acquainted with the ones pun¬ 
ished, they would not inflict the punishments. 

A teacher had punished a boy in school again and 


62 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


again until she had begun to consider him in the light 
of an enemy, and she felt that the boy’s feeling for 
her must be one of hatred. 

So it was in the nature of a surprise when, in view 
of the approaching holiday separation, other boys of 
the school brought to her desk little gifts of remem¬ 
brance, to have the “ bad boy ” approach with some 
hesitation, and place a box of candy on her desk. 

“ But I don’t think I can take it, Edward,” she said. 
“ You have been too bad a boy; you have seemed to do 
everything you could to displease me.” 

“ Oh, please take it, Miss Jones,” said the bad boy 
in entreating tones. “ I worked after school hours 
to get the money to buy it.” 

The teacher felt tears coming very near the surface 
then, for the bad boy was a poor boy, and had not so 
many pleasures in life that he could be expected to 
sacrifice any of them for her. 

Many acts of children are wrongly interpreted be¬ 
cause the teacher is not well enough acquainted with 
her pupils. If a better acquaintance with pupils were 
experienced by the teacher, how much better fitted she 
would be to train his powers, and help him develop 
himself into a worthy boy, and later, a useful man. 

II. Become Thoroughly Interested in the Boy .— 
Our getting interested in him will evidently inter¬ 
est him in us; and if that be true, we may have a 
powerful influence over him. We ought not to try to 
reform him entirely the first day; the laws of evolution 
work more slowly than that. Begin by inquiring why 
the boy is bad. His actions, when rightly understood, 
may not be actuated by an evil heart. Perhaps he 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


63 


entered the schoolroom intending to do right, but hav¬ 
ing the reputation of being a bad boy, he is spoken to 
sharply. What is the effect? — Instantly the blood 
mounts to his face, his good resolutions vanish, 
anger takes the place of good intentions, and he feels 
that everybody is against him and no one interested 
in him. 

Pupils should be commended when they do any¬ 
thing worthy of commendation. There are times when 
sharp words do more harm than good. Perhaps the 
boy has done his best, and the only thing that will 
incite him to a greater effort will be a kind word, 
which costs but little, and yet its influence may last 
a lifetime. A word of praise is often the opening 
wedge to the human heart. Parents and teachers 
should take notice of the small efforts that children 
make. 

A father walked up to a map his little boy had 
made, and pinned on the wall. He stood before it a 
long time in silence, and in silence walked away. The 
little fellow was sitting by the table with his books, 
watching with eager eyes, waiting anxiously for a 
word of approval from his father; as none came, his 
little face fell unhappily. The father walked into the 
next room, and said to his wife carelessly:— 

“ Robert has drawn a very clever little map in there. 
Look at it when you go in.” „ 

“Did you tell Robert so?” asked the wife, who 
had already praised her son’s good work. 

“ Why, no. I ought to have done so. I never 
thought to mention it.” 

“ Well you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” was 


6 4 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


the deserved reply. “ Go back now, and tell Robert 
what you think of his work.” 

Often we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for like 
sins of omission. 

You may say, “ Praise to face, open disgrace.” I 
do not believe it. The proverb is wrong, and the 
opposite is very often true. Praise to the face is one 
of the best things on earth, and there can be no dis¬ 
grace in it, unless untruth enters, or the praise is not 
deserved. 

The teacher or parent can always find something 
that is commendable in the child. Many a boy or 
girl who sits before the teacher day after day, hears 
but little praise at home, and possibly feels but little 
kindness. The teacher with tact can put into the 
child’s nature a higher and purer feeling for some¬ 
thing better than he has yet known. The habit of 
seeking for something to commend in children will 
bring sure reward. 

Human nature can not bear to be ignored. “ She 
freezes us out,” said a typical bad boy, who spoke of 
his teacher. We should watch carefully this point. 
Freeze out the bad in the children, but be watchful 
that the frost does not fall upon one little bud of 
goodness when it peeps out. Watch for the little 
germs of goodness, that when they appear you may 
pour sunshine upon them, and cause them to develop 
into something of real value. Let the bad child know 
that your sympathies are with him and that no dis¬ 
tance intervenes between you, except that which he 
makes himself; that the instant he is a good boy, he 
stands on an equality with other children. 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


65 


There is a wonderful difference in the schools of 
teachers who appeal to the Good and those who appeal 
and bring into prominence the Evil. 

A young teacher who had great success with a 
class of rough boys in the worst quarter of a large 
city, was asked at a teachers’ meeting to tell some¬ 
thing of the method by which she had transformed 
the lawless street urchins into respectable little boys. 

“ I haven’t any method, really,” she said mod¬ 
estly. “It is only because I have tried to become in¬ 
tensely interested in the boys; I say don't , 3 just as 
seldom as I possibly can to them. These boys had 
learned to lie and steal and fight, while truth, honesty, 
and acts of courtesy were unknown terms to them. 
So I began by telling them a story each morning about 
persons who had done some brave or honest or kind 
deed. I asked them to save up good things they had 
seen or done to tell at our morning exercises. Their 
eagerness about it, and their evident pride when I was 
pleased with their little incidents, showed that they 
were improving. There was just one boy who seemed 
to be hopeless. He was apparently indifferent to every¬ 
thing, and sat for weeks without showing any inter¬ 
est, with a stolid expression on his face, and'never 
contributed anything to the conversation. I had begun 
to be really discouraged about him, when one morn¬ 
ing he raised his hand as soon as it was time to begin 
the story telling. 

“ ‘ Well, Jim, what is it you have to tell us? ’ I said 
in the most pleasing way I could; for I was so glad to 
see that he was going to join in the exercises. 

5 


66 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


“ ‘ Man’s hat blew off this mornin’, as I was cornin’ 
to school, an’ I ran an’ got it for him.’ 

“ ‘ And what did he say? ’ I asked, hoping that a 
1 thank you ’ had rewarded his attempt in the right 
direction. 

“ ‘ He said, “ You young scamp, you’d made off 
with my hat if I hadn’t kept my eye on you,” ’ ex¬ 
claimed Jim, in an excited way. 

“ ‘ And what did you do then, Jim? ’ I asked with 
fear and trembling. 

“ ‘ Didn’t do nothin’, just come along to school,’ 
said Jim. ‘ I reckoned he didn’t know any better, 

and hadn’t no good teachin’ like I’m getting,’ and 

Jim lapsed into silence. 

“ This same boy became one of the interesting boys 
after this. Some people tell me I ought to tell the 
children how bad stealing and lying and fighting are, 
and yet as long as they will listen to me while I say, 

4 Be honest, be truthful, and be kind,’ I shall not keep 

the other things before their minds.” 

The young teacher sat down as modestly as she had 
risen, and it was unanimously agreed by the teachers 
who heard her, that whatever might be said for other 
methods, hers, which she did not even call a method, 
had commended itself to every one. Hold up the good 
before the children, and say very little about the bad; 
speak of the pleasant things in life to children, they 
will learn later about the unpleasant ones. 

These lines were said of a teacher: — 

“ There was a little schoolma’am 
Who had this curious way 
Of drilling in subtraction 
On every stormy day. 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


67 


“ ‘ Let’s all subtract the unpleasant things, 

Like doleful dumps and pain, 

And then/ said she, ‘‘you’ll gladly see 
That pleasant things remain/ ” 

III. Kind Treatment .— How to treat the boy is an¬ 
other essential thing. President Gilman, of Johns Hop¬ 
kins University, in one of his valuable talks admits 
that while it is possible to predict the speed that a 
thoroughbred colt may achieve in time, or to antici¬ 
pate the quality of a Durham calf, yet no one can dis¬ 
cover in the nursery the coming statesman or scholar, 
nor foretell the power in any one of a group of boys. 

The childhood of Daniel Webster did not show the 
man. He was a crying, weak, sickly boy, the puniest 
child in the family; but at manhood he was so robust 
that the coal-heavers paused in their work to stare 
at him as he passed by; his first few years in school 
did not reveal any extraordinary ability, but at man¬ 
hood he was a “ parliamentary Hercules/’ 

If every boy differs from every other boy in char¬ 
acter and temperament as he does in appearance, it fol¬ 
lows that plans of education should be adopted as far 
as practical to individual requirements. 

Neither precocity nor dullness is a certain index of 
the future of the boy. When we see a man, we can not 
tell what kind of a boy he came from, and when we see 
a boy, we can not tell what kind of a man he will make. 

Many a man of influence in the world to-day had 
a very poor beginning in life; parents have been mis¬ 
taken so often even in the temperaments and dispo¬ 
sitions of their own children. So many things are 
mistaken for stubbornness, and sometimes children are 


68 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


treated for that when they really need some other 
form of discipline. 

A boy of twelve years of age was called “ as stub¬ 
born as a mule,” when in fact he was only shy. He 
suffered from extreme sensitiveness, and thoroughly 
misunderstanding that quality, his family nearly 
ruined his life. 

A little, girl of only eight years, otherwise beautiful 
in character, was counted “ contrary ” and “ stub¬ 
born ” by both her parents, when her conduct was 
governed only by her vanity, and a desire to attract 
attention. She was not stubborn, but by so treating 
her weakness, her parents were fostering the very 
spirit they wanted to eradicate. 

' “ Real stubbornness must be carefully analyzed. If 
it comes from indifference, interest must be aroused; 
if hereditary, patience must be exercised; if a result 
of criticism by teachers or schoolmates, it must be 
met with extra kindness.” 

There is always a reason for the actions of chil¬ 
dren, and it is a fact that our teaching, in too many 
cases, is too little adapted to the individual members 
of the school. 

The great question in our modern pedagogics is to 
destroy methods which prove to be hindrances rather 
than helps to youthful development, and to substitute 
for them the power of reaching and impressing indi¬ 
viduals. Children of different ages and mental advan¬ 
tages require different methods to produce the same 
results. A certain teacher who had studied a par¬ 
ticularly bad boy from every conceivable standpoint, 
finally found the cause of his apparent wickedness. 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY. 1 


69 


He had been especially annoying all day, and at the 
close of school the teacher sat down by him, say- 
ing,. “John, what is the trouble, any way? Why 
is it you find it so hard to behave in school? ” Poor 
John burst into tears, and said, “ It’s 'cause I'm so 
blamed hungry all the time.” Then the teacher knew 
that the reformation must begin in the stomach. 

In so many cases it is better to lead the stubborn 
natures of children rather than drive them. It is a 
good deal like fishing for trout. Do you know any¬ 
thing about what it is to match one’s skill against 
the wily ways of a trout fighting for its life? The 
line is cast near the edge of a stream where there is a 
tuft of grass. The trout grabs the bait, and starts off 
with it. Should the green fisherman now attempt to 
land the trout, the chances are that the fish will escape. 

There is too much resistance to overcome, the line 
breaks, and the fish gets away, or if the line holds, 
the fish tears himself loose, and the chance to catch 
him is gone. 

The experienced fisherman, on the contrary, offers 
little resistance to the rush of the fish, keeping a tight 
line, and biding his time when the fish wears itself out; 
then he draws it to the surface quietly, but being ready 
at any time to give it more line, until at last the fish 
is so tired that it no longer offers resistance, and is 
pulled ashore. The only question is which will con¬ 
quer, the firm will and skill of the fisherman or the 
stubborn nature of the fish. By waiting, the fish¬ 
erman wins. In many respects the stubborn boy is 
like the fish. He is unreasonable, and draws away 
from the teacher. If one attempts to force him, 


70 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


there is danger of a break between teacher and pu¬ 
pil, whereas if the teacher, like the skillful fisher¬ 
man, can wait a little until the boy is more tractable 
and docile, he will be able to accomplish his end, and 
the boy will be led to recognize the superior skill and 
wisdom of the teacher. 

Someone has wisely said, “ There are times when 
the most skillful work will fail, both in teaching and 
in catching fish.” 

It depends largely upon how we treat our pupils 
whether they become useful or not. A very bad- 
appearing boy may have a tender heart beating under 
his jacket. He would not let you see it if he could 
help it, but he likes his teacher, and would do almost 
anything for her. His mother could tell you how the 
baby brother screams with delight when he comes into 
the house, and how he will sit a whole day, when 
any one of the family is sick, ready, if wanted to run 
errands. There is great hope for such a boy. He may 
be troublesome at times, but he is never mean or false 
or cruel. What he needs is good influences. He has 
the grit of stalwart manhood in him and the spirit of 
a valiant soldier of the Cross. 

IV.. Trust the Boy .— We may conquer the had hoy 
by trusting him. Some years ago a clergyman visiting 
a school of ragged boys in London, asked a class of 
bright, mischievous urchins, all of whom had been 
gathered from the streets : — 

“ How many bad boys does it take to make a good 
one?” A little fellow immediately replied, “One, 
sir, if you trust him.” 

That boy revealed a secret, and like most secrets, 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY. ! 


7 1 

it is very simple when once you know it. To treat 
a boy well is to trust in the better side of his nature. 
Suspicion hinders, but trust helps it to blossom into 
flower and fragrance. “ Trust a man, and you make 
him trustworthy,” is the saying of a wise man; and 
he only put into other words the thought of the little 
boy in the ragged school in London. 

Experience proves over and over again that Trust is 
the atmosphere in which the best qualities flourish. A 
reclaimed thief, after being honest for some years, was 
forced to steal, since he knew he was watched. The 
doubtful look and keen supervision of a new master 
who had been told about the man’s record, drove him 
down into the depths from which he had been lifted. 
Trusting him would have saved him, and no doubt 
trusting many a boy would save him. 

An experiment was tried in one of our great cities 
a few years ago. A hall was fitted up, and tables filled 
with papers and magazines, and one especially fitted 
up for innocent games. The boys and young men who 
frequented the street corners and loafing places were 
invited to spend their evenings in the hall. 

The superintendent laid down but one rule, “ that 
the young men were to keep order.” He trusted them. 
At first they thought there was something behind this 
faith in them, but as the weeks went by, their latent 
manhood came to the surface, and they learned what 
power they had for self-control. The young people 
strove hard to become worthy of the trust and confi¬ 
dence placed in them, and a moral revolution was 
accomplished in that part of the city. Bad boys were 
made good by trusting them. 


72 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


I have in mind a bright young teacher who had a 
boy come into her grade from the next lower room. 
He had the worst reputation of any boy in the school. 
His behavior was so bad, and he was so disobedient, 
that he had always been put in a seat directly in front 
of the teacher’s desk, where he could be conveniently 
watched. While the boy’s reputation had preceded 
him, the new teacher had her own ideas as to how 
mischievous boys should be treated. On the first day 
she said, “ Now, Joseph, they tell me you are a bad 
boy, and need to be watched. I like your looks, and 
I am going to trust you. Your seat will be at the 
back of the room, end seat, fourth row from the wall.” 
That was all she said. Joseph went to the seat dum- 
founded. He had never in his life been put upon 
his honor before, and a new feeling came over him. 
From the very first he proved himself worthy of his 
new teacher’s trust. She gave him a chance to reform, 
and he did not disappoint her. She showed by her 
treatment of him that she had faith in him, no matter 
what evil reports she had heard about him. 

She “ managed him ” without his suspecting it in 
the least. On one occasion the teacher was called from 
the room, and she asked Joseph to take his place at 
her desk, and have charge of the room while she was 
absent. When she returned ten minutes later, she 
found the room in good order, and Joseph was compli¬ 
mented by the teacher for having performed his duty 
so well. 

The preparation of the lessons in school is not the 
chief thing. We must develop a higher and broader 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


73 


spirit of obedience. The making of a good man is of 
far greater importance than the making of a good 
reader, a good mathematician, or a brilliant scholar; 
and the school which does not impart to its pupils the 
elements of high character, and how to use their 
powers in self-control, is unworthy of the American 
people. 

V. Keep the Boy Busy .— To manage , the “ bad 
boy,” we must give him something to do. We may ad¬ 
mit that the “ bad boy ” is found in every school. He 
is not bad in the sense of being vicious. He is not in 
danger of even becoming a street loafer. His badness 
is strictly compatible with industrious habits, but he 
is bad in the school sense. 

His conduct turns the hair of earnest parents and 
teachers gray before its time. He is disgustingly 
healthy, and does not seem to possess a nervous system 
any more than does the blackboard; he is restless, 
noisy, troublesome. Strong benches sometimes give 
way under him, and door knobs will not keep their 
places when he is about; even panes of glass have 
a habit of snapping in his presence. 

He is impenetrable to fogs, rain, and snow, while a 
broiling June afternoon finds him the only cool and 
wakeful person in the room. The scoldings which 
he receives seem to nourish him, and the switch only 
appears to arouse in him new ideas of tormenting his 
teacher. When he has been punished severely a few 
times in close succession, he will drop out of school 
for a day or two; and even then he wonders how the 
thing can run without his presence. He is a genuine 


7 4 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


boy, however, and soon forgets his punishment, and 
returns to school, willing to overlook the teacher’s 
“ wrongdoing.” 

Now this “ bad boy ” has one redeeming feature, 
or quality; namely, a decided talent for wanting to 
work. This reveals to us the secret of his activity; 
and if we keep him busy, we solve the problem of his 
discipline. 

Children love activity; they tire of stupid monotony, 
like the boy who did not have enough to do, when 
asked what he did in school, replied, “ I wait for four 
o’clock to come.” 

If we would save pupils from temptation, they must 
be busy. The value of the farm life to boys is that 
there is always something to be done. Give the chil¬ 
dren work to do in the schoolroom,— not simply to 
keep them busy, but work that will lead to usefulness. 

A story is told of a boy who brought home his 
arithmetic lesson, sat down, and began to try to solve 
the problems according to directions given by his 
teacher. After watching the boy struggle with his 
arithmetic for awhile, his mother offered to help him. 

“ Oh, no,” said he, “you can’t do it to save you.” 
His mother was a college graduate, and naturally 
felt her son’s rebuke, and then insisted upon her ability 
to solve the problems. She did so to her own satis¬ 
faction, but the boy declared there was something 
wrong, although he could not tell what it was. 

“ We’ll leave it to papa,” said the mother. “ He 
ought to know, for he took the honors of his class in 
college in mathematics.” 

When the father returned from the office, he looked 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


7 5 


over the work, and declared the mother’s solution cor¬ 
rect, and indeed it was the only correct solution of the 
problem. 

The son, unconvinced, went to school the next 
morning. At noon he came home triumphant. 

“ You were both wrong,” said he to his parents* 
“ and I knew it.” 

“ What was the matter ? ” asked both parents. 

“ Well, you left out two ‘ therefores ’ and a 
‘ hence.’ ” 

A school like that, in which the teachers are more 
careful about the “ therefores ” than of genuine ideas, 
will never save the “bad boys;” it will rather drive 
them to do desperate things. A boy in one of our large 
cities grew despondent over his low marks, and ended 
his troubles by committing suicide. T! is sad story 
leads us to inquire into the working of a system of 
teaching and marking which may be responsible for 
suicide. Our schools should cultivate the spirit of 
joyousness rather than despondency. What is more 
pitiable than a boy of ten or twelve with a prematurely 
careworn expression, at the age which nature intended 
to be filled with shouting and laughter and activity. 
Many a “ bad boy ” has been saved by having aroused 
in him an admiration for the way in which a 
teacher gives instruction. A singular experience with 
a hardened, almost criminal pupil, whose mind was en¬ 
tirely unopened to the good or beautiful until he heard 
his teacher giving instruction in geography, is told. 
The pupil was notorious. When he entered the room 
each morning, it was with an inaudible laugh upon his 
face. His attendance was enforced, very frequently 


;6 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY.’ 


being brought to school by the truant officer. The 
book might be opened upon his desk, but he never 
read it. It was a clear case of incorrigibility. No 
sane teacher would disturb the demon within by un¬ 
gentle means. The boy had lost faith in teachers; he 
had no intellectual appetite; his manner showed the 
spirit of disobedience, and life in the schoolroom was 
a burden to him. One day the teacher had about her 
a group of children for a lesson in geography, the 
topic being the products of a group of Southern States, 
of which South Carolina was one. Much was said 
about cotton and its culture. In the midst of the work, 
and when the interest in the work was the greatest, 
the teacher glanced over toward James, the notorious 
boy. He had moved over toward the class in geog¬ 
raphy, and a little later on as the lesson grew more 
interesting, without permission, he left his seat, 
crossed the room, and sat down near the teacher, and 
listened intently to every word. The lesson closed, 
and all pupils passed to their seats but James, who 
said to the teacher in a half-shamed tone and manner, 
Where does it tell in my geography what you were 
talking about to-day ? ” That was the first interest 
he had ever shown in school work. The teacher 
grasped the opportunity, and she soon had him inter¬ 
ested not only in geography but in history and arith¬ 
metic, and later in language. Teachers should give 
to the “ bad boy ” her sincerest sympathy, her best 
thought, and greatest patience, not because he deserves 
it, but because he may not be to blame for his wayward 
tendencies and obstinate nature. 

The bay boy ” may be the teacher's opportunity, 


MANAGING THE BAD BOY . 5 


n 


and she should train whatever is good in him. It is 
encouraging to know that some of these troublesome 
boys become, in after life, some of the most valuable 
citizens. Indeed, there comes a turning point in the 
lives of most of them when they begin to appreciate 
the fact that there is a better life to live; and when a 
reform does occur, the change is such as to make them 
feel that they have a duty of more than ordinary im¬ 
portance to perform. 


VI. 


“ MANAGING THE BAD GIRL.” 

One bright morning in September I stood at a little 
way-station on one of our great trunk lines of railroad, 
waiting for a train to carry me to a great city ten miles 
away. Walking up and down the platform, a little 
before eight o’clock, I saw several groups of children 
pass by on their way to a school building, which stood 
at the edge of the village near by. Then the great train 
bore me away through the beautiful country. Every 
highway along the valley seemed to be thronged with 
children on their way to school. From the car win¬ 
dows one could see them passing along by roads and 
across green meadows with books and lunch baskets, 
wending their way to the quiet little buildings located 
in secluded spots where they spent many valuable hours 
in school work. 

While pondering over the scene, and as in imagina¬ 
tion I saw children in all parts of the State and country 
going to school, the great city came in sight, and I was 
soon walking along crowded streets. Here, too, were 
children with arms full of books hurrying along. In 
this aggregation of children seen in country and city, 
we find all phases of character, every form of physical 
development, all kinds of dispositions and tempera¬ 
ments — since nature never duplicates her creations. 
Among these groups of children we find those with 
various motives, purposes, and aspirations. The small 
78 


MANAGING THE BAD GIRL . 3 


79 


boy is present, for he loves to go to school, also the little 
girl with her bright look and smiling countenance. 
Among them is the older boy — having emerged from 
the chrysalis state — with his cumulative force of char¬ 
acter to be molded into the progressive man, or to be 
neglected and dwindle into the headstrong, malicious 
boy; the youthful girl also is present, full of life, with 
brain capacity of sparkling thought and ready develop¬ 
ment. 

To study the mighty army of children in our schools 
reveals characteristics and dispositions innumerable, 
and because of this great variety of persons we should 
expect them to act differently, even when circumstances 
and environments are similar. I have read somewhere 
that “ girls jilted by their lovers reveal their nation¬ 
ality. A Spanish girl will hire an assassin to do away 
with her faithless lover; the Italian girl will herself 
use the stiletto; the German girl will weep and pine 
away; the Irish girl will give her quondam lover a 
piece of her mind; the French girl will toss her head, 
saying, ‘ Just as good fish in the sea as ever was 
caught; ’ and the American girl will sue for damages.” 

Children as well as maidens differ because of the 
differences of motives, mental ability, environments, 
and power of control. This being the case, each pupil 
needs a different method of discipline and instruction. 
A mother being asked how she trained her seven girls, 
replied that she had seven \ \ethods for training them 
in right and wrong. If all homes would teach children 
these two things, and train them in the practice of 
obedience and self-control, school discipline would 
be greatly simplified; but all homes are not so ordered. 


So 


MANAGING THE BAD GIRL.’ 


The deplorable fact is that many children, like 
“ Topsy ” in “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” just growed up. 
So the school becomes a garden where weeds and 
flowers are found, and the very first duty of the teacher 
is to discover and distinguish between weeds and 
flowers. Anyone, with ordinary intelligence, after a 
month’s observation can do this; it requires no great 
psychological knowledge to do it. In general appear¬ 
ance all may have much in common, and strange as it 
may seem, some of the weeds will outshine the flow¬ 
ers — but with a month’s association with the chil¬ 
dren the skillful teacher will know every weed and 
flower, and she can then go to work to “ transform 
the weeds and nurture the flowers.” 

Among the great mass of children will be found 
girls as well as boys who are difficult to manage,— not 
because they are “ bad,” for that which we call bad is 
very often something else. It may be thoughtlessness, 
or lack of judgment, or a largely developed faculty of 
giddiness, or an ungovernable tendency to giggle, that 
makes the girl act rude. We will all agree that it is a 
very dangerous symptom in a school when a consider¬ 
able number of pupils are always ready to manifest 
their pleasure at the success of mischief or wrong. A 
writer of note says: “ I was present at an interview 
between an assistant principal and a young girl, one of 
her pupils. The girl said to her teacher in a petulant 
manner, “ I’d like to know what you have against me; 
I haven’t done anything.” The teacher replied, “ I’ll 
tell you what I have against you. You are always on 
the side of wrong. When disorder occurs, or when 
anything wrong is done in the school, you laugh and 


“MANAGING THE BAD GIRL.” 81 

show that you are pleased. I ought to find you on the 
other side,— you should show displeasure when any¬ 
thing wrong is done.” The girl stood convicted. She 
had learned a great lesson, and she accepted the rebuke 
as coming from an estimable lady, and she grew to be 
a teacher herself. The fault in that girl was a common 
one; namely, to laugh and seem to be pleased at any 
mischief that bolder pupils may perform; this espe¬ 
cially when the teacher is baffled for the time. 

This is illustrated in a case which occurred in Penn¬ 
sylvania. There was an unruly boy in school, whose 
chief delight was to create trouble. The teacher spoke 
to the boy’s father about him twice, and at the parent’s 
request the teacher punished the boy severely, but no 
improvement grew out of the punishment. Finally the 
boy’s father concluded to send him to a reform school. 
The morning before he was to be taken away the 
teacher said to the children, “ Fred Brown’s father 
has decided to send his boy to the reform school. 
While I do not consider you all to blame in the matter 
of Fred’s bad conduct, I do feel that if he must go, 
you girls have helped to send him. You have laughed 
when he did bad things, and watched him when he 
played in school, and tried to annoy his teacher. If, 
instead, you had kept at work, and paid no attention to 
him, and so made him understand that you did not 
think such things were either bright or smart, he would 
have been a better boy.” The children looked as 
though they were attending Fred’s funeral. “ Now,” 
said the teacher, “ I ask, Do you wish to save him from 
going to the reform school? ” “ Yes! yes,” they said. 

“If I bring him back, what will you do?” They 


82 “ MANAGING THE BAD GIRL.” 

promised neither to laugh at him nor to watch him, 
but to ignore his bad actions until he should learn that 
he had no friends in such matters. Fred’s father was 
told what had been done, and he promised to give the 
boy one more chance. Soon Fred tried his old tricks, 
but all in vain; his followers were in better business. 
One look from the teacher effectually settled anyone 
who seemed inclined to watch him. Fred was 
naturally bright, as all such boys are, and when he 
found that his conduct had the disapproval of all the 
pupils as well as the teacher, he gave up “ trying to be 
smart,” began to work, and finally became a model 
pupil and the pride of his family. 

Another class of rude girls found in school are those 
who are impudent. The tongue is an unruly member 
which some girls as well as some boys have not learned 
to control. A wise teacher had an impudent girl in her 
school. One day when she had been especially trying, 
the teacher asked the girl to remain after school., 
When they were alone, she asked the girl what she 
thought a lady-like girl ought to do when she had been 
rude and impolite, but the girl was sullen and would 
not answer. Oh, the silence of a girl who does not 
want to talk. The teacher said, “ Think now.” The 
girl still hung her head and remained obstinate. Fi¬ 
nally she said, “ Well, go home now, I am sorry you 
can not think. I will go and see your parents about 
your conduct.” The girl then spoke, and gave the 
teacher to understand that if she went to the girl’s 
home, her mother would give the teacher a piece of her 
mind. It is not pleasant to meet an infuriated person 
at any time, yet this wise teacher started off with cour- 


“ MANAGING THE BAD GIRL.” 83 

age from the school building to face the reception 
promised by the girl. 

Imagine, if you can, her relief when a sweet-faced, 
lady-like matron welcomed her with a cordiality 
wholly unaffected, and invited her into the parlor. 
The mother was surprised, indeed, to learn that she had 
been represented to the teacher as one who would 
scold. She very sensibly promised to take her daughter 
“ in hand,” and she did, and in a week’s time the girl 
was very different from what she had been. Thus by a 
fifteen-minute call this teacher learned more about the 
“ impudent ” girl’s peculiarities and disposition than 
she would otherwise ever have learned. When trouble 
arises, go to the homes, see the parents; they are 
the ones most interested in the good name and train¬ 
ing of their daughters. Do not be downcast, if you 
meet obstinacy and stubbornness and opposition in the 
schoolroom. Rough seas and tempests make bold sail¬ 
ors, and opposition is sometimes the soul of victory. 
It takes no effort to sail down stream, and the teacher 
who never meets obstacles in the schoolroom will not 
be wholly developed and equipped for the work in all 
places. 

One of the most unreasonable persons we have to 
deal with in the schoolroom is the vain girl who knows 
it all. She is not a whit shy; but rather tries to attract 
attention. When a question is asked, she raises her 
hand and looks very bright. If called upon to re¬ 
cite, she rises, looks about her, pauses, consumes time, 
is seated; for it is “ not the question she thought it 
was.” She is very restless, and it seems very hard for 
her to keep in one position for a single minute. To a 


8 4 


MANAGING THE BAD GIRL.’ 


casual observer, she would appear to be greatly inter¬ 
ested in her work, but to the one who studies the 
pupils carefully, it will be seen that her mind is upon 
herself rather than on her studies. She lives on praise 
at home, but does nothing at school worthy of it. 
When she, by vanity, offends in some way, and is 
questioned, while she will not tell an untruth, she will 
minify her part in the offense, or rather state her 
part in an indefinite way, and will talk all around it. 
Her vanity has led her to lead a life of “ bluffing,” 
as we say, and she expects to make her way by a super¬ 
ficial brightness. She grows up to her “ teens,” and 
carries the same traits of pert forwardness with her. 
Once in a while she gets a lesson which is better 
than one taken from books. One Monday morning, 
a short time ago, two of these supercilious girls with 
their arms full of books, the contents of which they 
knew but little, entered a street car, and found only 
standing room. One of them whispered to the other, 
“ I am going to get a seat from one of these men. 
You just watch me, now.” 

She selected a sedate-looking individual, sailed up 
to him, and said, “ My dear Mr. Green, how delighted 
I am to see you! You are almost a stranger! Will 
I accept a seat? Thank you.” 

The sedate-looking man, a perfect stranger, gave 
her his seat, saying: “ Sit down Jane, my girl, don’t 
often see you on wash day. You must be tired! How 
is your mistress? ” 

The girl got the seat, but lost her vivacity, and 
for once she realized that her “ game of bluff ” ex¬ 
posed her audacity. 


MANAGING THE BAD GIRL? 


S5 


This is a difficult class of girls to manage; they 
are not really teachable, and although they may be¬ 
long to good families, yet they have been indulged 
until they are a worry to all their teachers. How 
often we see one with an exceptionally pretty face, 
and we think she must be a charming person; our 
fancies are dispelled, however, when she opens her 
pretty mouth to speak. The English which proceeds 
from it is something shocking. 

Robert Nourse tells a story which illustrates the 
point, of a young lady whom he met soon after coming 
to America. 

He was helping in a revival in one of the churches 
of the Middle States. Night after night he noticed 
a beautiful girl sitting near the front seat. He no¬ 
ticed, too, that the ministers conversed personally with 
everyone else in the house except this particular girl. 
The more Mr. Nourse thought about her, the more 
he wondered if she were a Christian, and why some¬ 
one did not speak to her about it. He never before 
had seen a girl so beautiful, as such beauty was rare 
in England. 

It would be too bad if her soul were lost because 
of negligence to speak to her. Finally he made up 
his mind to approach her himself. When the meeting 
opened the next evening, she sat as before, in all her 
beauty and loveliness. After the first part of the serv¬ 
ices was over, and the ministers began to go among 
the members and seekers, Mr. Nourse approached this 
young girl, and taking a seat beside her, said: — 

“ Miss, are you a Christian?” An English girl 
would have said, “ I hope so, sir; ” but to his astonish- 


86 


MANAGING THE BAD GIRL. 1 


ment, this beautiful girl began chewing her gum, and 
said: — 

" You bet your boots I am! ” 

Whose fault is it that girls grow up into such 
unnatural beings as the one described? It can not 
be the fault of the schools, for they do not teach 
" slang ” or vanity or even obstinacy; it can not be the 
fault of the church, for that was instituted to culti¬ 
vate soul power; it can not be the fault of society,’ 
for such girls have not yet entered social circles. The 
fault must then be in the homes. Foreigners are al¬ 
ways talking about “ spoiled American children,” but 
they do not blame the schools for this condition of 
things. They say that in the American homes there 
is too much indifference about the children attending 
school, that too much effort is being made to make 
the road to learning easy, and that all the habits of 
application and concentration are uncultivated. 

A little girl ten years of age was missing from 
school for several weeks; her teacher called at her 
home to discover the cause of the child’s absence. Her 
mother did not know why her daughter had been 
absent, but said she would call her and find out. 

“ Dearie,” she said, as the child came into the room, 
“ Miss Jones says that you have been out of school 
for several weeks, and she has called to see if you 
have been ill.” 

■ No, indeed,” said dearie, “ but don’t you remem¬ 
ber, mama, on Easter I said I wasn’t going back to 
school for six weeks? The time is up this week; I 
have it marked on my calendar. I’ll be there Monday, 
Miss Jones, and I’ll study real hard and catch up.” 


“ MANAGING THE BAD GIRL.” 87 

“Isn’t she a funny child?” laughed the mother. 
“ I never know what she is going to say next.” 

Sure enough, Monday brought “ dearie,” and she 
studied as hard as she could, but she could not make 
up those lost weeks, and “ there are no words to ex¬ 
press the indignation of that mother with the principal 
when, at the commencement exercises, ‘ dearie ’ was 
the only child in the grade who did not receive a cer¬ 
tificate of promotion.” This girl belongs to the class 
of girls that gives teachers trouble in their schools. 
They grow up without proper home training, and 
enter school with ideas of discipline which are detri¬ 
mental to any well-organized institution. It is this 
class of girls who grow sullen, obstinate, self-willed. 

It takes a wise man to know how to control and 
deal with a balky horse, and it takes a very wis6 
teacher to know how to manage a stubborn girl. 
Sometimes old prescriptions for balky horses fail, and 
no general direction will fit every case of stubbornness. 
However, the remedy which proved successful with 
a certain horse may be applied with success to per¬ 
sons. A crowd had gathered about a horse and wagon 
in the middle of the street. The horse had balked. 
People passing by stopped to tell the driver what to do. 

“Tie a string around his ear,” said one. “ It’ll 
give him something to think about.” A string was 
produced, and wound tightly around one of the ani¬ 
mal’s ears. It had no effect. 

“ Blindfold him! ” suggested another. A bandage 
was tied over his eyes, and an effort made to start 
him. Same result. 

“ I have owned horses all my life,” said a large 


88 


MANAGING THE BAD GIRL.’ 


man, *' and have had some bad ones, and the only 
thing to do is to blow into his right ear.” 

It was done, but the horse stood still. By this 
time fifty people had gathered. 

“ Try him with an ear of corn,” said a new man, 
arriving on the scene. That failed to move the animal. 

“ I’ll try the ‘ persuader ’ on him,” said the exas¬ 
perated owner, and he whipped the beast until someone 
threatened to send for the humane agent. 

All in vain. Finally a benevolent-looking old man 
forced his way through the crowd, and said, “ I have 
seen a great many balky horses started by building 
a fire under them.” A boy was sent to a neighbor- 1 
ing furniture-store for some shavings. He came back 
with a huge armful, placed them on the ground under 
the horse, and touched a match to them. When the 
smoke curled up around the horse, he looked about 
him, and took a calm survey of the place, unbent a 
little, and when the shavings burst into a blaze; he 
moved forward about six feet; he seemed to be in full 
possession of all his faculties. He stopped with the 
buggy right over the blaze, and not until the vehicle 
was damaged to the amount of twenty-five dollars 
did anyone think to scatter the embers. 

Just then an old colored man in a faded suit of 
clothes and a hat with half the brim gone, went up, 
spoke kindly to the animal, rubbed his nose, patted him 
on the neck, climbed into the damaged buggy, picked 
up the lines, and said, “ Git along, sonny,” and the 
horse walked off as if nothing had happened out of 
the ordinary. It is possible that the stubborn girl, 
under the influence of a gentle-minded teacher, who 


MANAGING THE BAD GIRL. 5 


89 


will strongly appeal to her deepest nature,— try to 
strike a chord in the girl’s heart that no one has previ¬ 
ously awakened,— will grow less obstinate and more 
courteous, more thoughtful, and perhaps become a 
leader in her community. 

The Creator designed the human mind to grow 
into beauty and strength, and the teacher is one of the 
chief instruments in its proper development. “ No 
profession calls for more patience or forbearance than 
that of teaching.” Some men can drive a team of 
horses so that they will go along willingly and easily; 
other men will wear a team out in short order by nag¬ 
ging it. So with some pupils of high nervous tempera¬ 
ments — they must be handled properly, or they grow 
to dislike all school work, as we would dislike a prison 
house because it has shut off our freedom. 

Is it not possible that children’s natures may be 
transformed into something unnatural when they are 
continually “ nagged,” and made to feel that whatever 
they do will be wrong? 

A girl who had no opportunities to attend school, 
when quite young, on account of sickness, entered a 
graded school where she found a teacher noted for 
her sarcasm and amount of venom she could empty 
upon the heads of her pupils. The girl had learned 
to draw during her sickness, and would unconsciously 
sketch some picture while a recitation was in progress. 
One day while her teacher was explaining a problem 
in algebra to a few of the slower ones, the girl, for¬ 
getful of algebra and her surroundings for the mo¬ 
ment, began drawing some lines on her notebook. She 
was aroused from her enraptured gazing at the draw- 


90 


MANAGING THE BAD GIRL. 1 


ing, by. a clear, cold, sarcastic voice, “ Young ladies 
and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you, Miss 
Jones, who can do two things at once — draw like 
Michael Angelo and listen to an explanation in alge¬ 
bra.” There was a suppressed laugh, and all eyes were 
turned on the poor, bewildered girl. She bowed her 
head on her desk; she bit her lips to keep from cry¬ 
ing; and, almost blind with mental agony, she asked 
to leave the room. Permission being given, she stag¬ 
gered to the cloak-room, where she was afterward 
found writhing in physical and mental distress. The 
girl lay many days in a darkened room before she 
was well enough to again enter school. Her teacher 
was a source of terror to her, but she endured it, say¬ 
ing, “ Next year, I will have a different teacher.” Her 
school life the rest of the year was miserable, except 
for the few minutes, perhaps twice a week, when the 
principal came in, and spoke words of commendation 
and encouragement. The day came the next term 
when she was his pupil. Her intellect awakened, her 
imagination began to work; the principal’s words of 
praise inspired her to make rapid progress, and she 
graduated from that school with honors. 

The true teacher has faith in the children, in their 
capabilities, in their desires. She wields a power whose 
strength is magical; she gets outside of the books, 
and inspires pupils with higher ideas of life. Everyi 
girl who goes out of school to-day will know enough 
mentally to get along in the world, but we want to 
be certain that they go out well equipped with right 
views of life as well. 

What is there admirable in the brilliant, vain, ao* 


MANAGING THE BAD GIRL.’ 


91 


complished selfish girl? Oh, what noble acts can be 
accomplished by the young lady of pure thoughts and 
bold determinations! What power she can exert for 
the uplifting of humanity! 

The life of woman has undergone many changes 
in the course of a century, and the way woman plays 
her part in the busy public life of the present day 
can not be ignored in testing any part of the girl’s 
education. 


VII. 


CRITICAL MOMENTS. 

Out of the testimony of many experienced teachers, 
we learn that there are certain moments during each 
day in the schoolroom that may be called " Critical 
moments ” or those periods of the day when teachers 
must have all the faculties and powers which they 
possess in readiness for action. The success of the 
teacher depends largely upon these moments, and the 
purpose of this chapter is to point out the critical, 
periods of the day. 

I. Opening the Doors .— From the time the school¬ 
room door is opened in the morning until the school is 
called to order for work is a critical period. As a 
general thing, all will be quiet in the presence of 
the new teacher the first morning. Most of the chil¬ 
dren will enter quietly and select seats. After the first 
morning, there will be some who will become bolder 
and will try the mettle of the new teacher. This 
one will talk loud, that one will be boisterous, two 
boys will clinch for a wrestle over beyond the stove, 
and two girls will chase each other around the benches, 
unless the teacher is there for the purpose of direct¬ 
ing things. 

The teacher must be alert at these times. Usually 
a look from her will silence the offenders — that is, 
if the teacher’s look means anything. The offender 
may smile, and the young teacher may think he is 
92 


IN THE SCHOOLROOM. 


93 


not silenced, but when he finds that the teacher means 
something by the way she looks, he will soon get quiet. 
I have seen children smile as if they did not care, 
but that was not their feeling, for almost immediately 
they would burst into tears. 

If the morning is cold or wet, I should not object 
to children standing by the stove,— a few at a time,— 
until warm, and clothing dry, but children should 
never be allowed to run at will around the room, or 
to lean out the windows or act in a boisterous man¬ 
ner. A few mornings of careful training will establish 
the order for a whole term. Teachers can have this 
just as they want it. A careless teacher will have a 
disorderly school during these opening minutes, and 
if disorderly then, disorderly all day. 

I went to a school once to visit a teacher for the 
purpose of gaining information about his work, that 
I might recommend him to a better place which I 
had been asked to fill with a good teacher. I arrived 
before school time, for I was anxious to know how 
he put in the time before recitations began. I went 
to the door, which was open, stepped in and sat down 
near the door. The children were making so much 
noise, no one could have heard a rap on the door. 
They were racing around the room, laughing and 
screaming, and a cloud of dust filled the room. I 
thought the teacher had not arrived yet, but at that 
moment saw the top of his head beyond his desk at 
the other end of the room. The children saw me 
enter; we greeted each other with smiles. The thought 
uppermost in my mind was, “ This is the children's 
hour." (I found out later that each hour of the day 


94 


CRITICAL MOMENTS 


was the children’s hour.) The children naturally set¬ 
tled down and became quiet, as I watched them run¬ 
ning and jumping untiPthe room was filled with one 
great cloud of dust. So quiet did they become that 
the teacher felt the change, and looked around to see 
the cause of such silence. He saw me, and came for¬ 
ward, apologizing for not hearing me. How could 
he hear me? He was down behind his desk, making 
out his monthly report. The position which I went 
to give him he never filled; it paid twenty dollars 
more a month than he was getting, but I could not 
afford to recommend him to the place. A great deal 
depends upon those minutes just before opening the 
school for regular recitations. The teacher should 
spend that time in getting better acquainted with the 
pupils. They will value all the little kind words and 
attentions. It will not be long until even the shyest 
of the children will want to scrape an acquaintance 
with the teacher, who will begin to receive little pres¬ 
ents from the pupils. This one will bring an apple, 
and that one a flower, perhaps, and someone will bring 
a picture. 

I read of a little girl who noticed that other little 
girls were bringing the teacher presents, and she be¬ 
gan to look around the house at home to see what she 
could take that would please the teacher and at the 
same time be appropriate and useful. The next morn¬ 
ing she stole quietly to the side of the teacher and 
slipped a neat little box into her hand, on which was 
written, “To my dear teacher.” As she deposited 
the box in the teacher’s hand, she said, “ They hurt 
mama, so she could not wear them.” When the teacher 


IN THE SCHOOLROOM. 


95 


opened the box, she found a nice set of “false” 
teeth. 

I want to impress upon the teachers’ minds the 
importance of these few minutes in the morning, for 
they are precious ones for teacher and pupils — a time 
in which the teacher must have all her faculties at 
her command, and, while courteous and affable, never 
make an effort to become familiar with the pupils. 
Many a teacher has failed because she became too 
familiar with her pupils. The teacher ought to walk 
among the children, be free and friendly, but preserve 
the dignity of manhood or womanhood, and thus im¬ 
press upon the pupils something of the character of 
the position of the teacher. 

II. Change of Classes .— Another critical moment 
in the schoolroom is during the change of classes. One 
class passing to their seats, and another passing to the 
recitation bench. I have been in schools where you 
could scarcely tell a change of classes was being made, 
so quietly did the children move. I have been in other 
schools when classes moved, and it reminded me of 
Belgium’s capital the night before the battle of Water¬ 
loo. Byron describes it — 

“ Then and there was hurrying to and fro.” 

When classes change, there ought to be a few mo¬ 
ments of relaxation,— give the children’s minds time 
and chance to unbend,— a minute or two of whisper¬ 
ing or visiting. Jennie has something of importance 
to say to Sadie; Mary wants to tell Grace why she was 
late and could not come with her to school; Euclid 
wants to question Archimedes about a problem in cir- 


96 


CRITICAL MOMENTS 


cular measure; Socrates may desire to ask Plato a 
question in ethics; and Cole may want to know Black- 
stone’s opinion about the teacher’s right to keep a fel¬ 
low in at recess, who will thereby lose valuable time 
on the playground. Give a minute or two for moving 
across the floor for exchanging books. The teacher 
will gain time by it. When the class is called, there 
should be no hurry about beginning the recitation; 
wait until the school is quiet before you begin the new 
recitation. Teachers can have this just as they want 
it. Children are ready to be just what the teacher 
desires. The great difficulty about so many teachers 
is that they have no definite idea just how they are 
going to do things; they change their plans so often 
that children can not keep with the changes, they 
become bewildered and do not know just what the 
teacher wants them to do. 

Teachers should not get into a hurry about hear-* 
ing recitations. So many teachers are anxious to 
get in every moment of the time in reciting. It is 
not the amount of time we put into a recitation that 
counts, but the power we throw into it; it is the char¬ 
acter of the recitation that counts. If all are awake 
and full of animation, the time will be long enough. 
Have it understood that there must be no interruptions 
during recitation; this will enable teacher and pupils 
to concentrate their powers upon the lesson and reci¬ 
tation. 

III. Intermission .— Another time in school work 
which might be called a critical moment is at inter¬ 
mission, or when pupils go out at recess or noon. 
The manner in which pupils are dismissed has a good 


IN THE SCHOOLROOM. 


97 


deal to do with the general conduct and discipline 
of the school. Some teachers think they dismiss in 
an orderly way when they get the pupils quiet — boys 
with caps in hand, girls with wraps on — the door is 
the objective point, and when the teacher says, “ Re¬ 
cess;” the pupils make for the door, yelling like Mo¬ 
hawks when the latter give a war-whoop. I heard 
a young teacher describe the way he dismissed his 
pupils. He had them get ready, all hats and wraps 
on, and feet set ready to run for the door. He held 
a handkerchief in the air; when all was quiet, he let 
it drop — this was the signal for all to go. 

Teachers who want to preserve good discipline will 
never dismiss children in that way, and yet such things 
are being done by untrained teachers. There must 
be an orderly, definite plan which children thoroughly 
understand. They ought to march out in regular or¬ 
der. You say, “ What about in the country schools 
where all children do not care to go out?” I would 
have those who desire to go out at intermission to 
march out, if there were only two. A teacher can 
not afford to be careless for a single'time, without 
losing power. 

Teachers will differ in their manner of having chil¬ 
dren march out of the schoolroom, just as teachers 
will differ in their manner of conducting recitations. 
One will show a weakness, another will show power 
and strength. Here are two teachers with their rooms 
ready to be dismissed for the day. The first detects 
some signs of mischief and disorder. There is a pe¬ 
culiar restlessness among the boys. They like to try 
the teacher’s mettle, who has a kind of defiant look 
7 


98 


CRITICAL MOMENTS 


in her eye. She gives orders to this one and com¬ 
mands that one in a high, unnatural tone of voice. The 
children detect a weakness in her manner, and see 
plainly her anxiety; they venture to risk what is in 
their minds. The word march is given, and down 
come the feet with a heaviness that makes the build¬ 
ing tremble. “ Boys, stand still,” shouts the teacher 
with a shriek. “ If you can’t go quietly, you will 
not go at all! ” “ Now pass.” A suppressed giggle 

goes the length of the row, and when the door is 
reached, those feet come down like so many bricks. 
An exultant war-whoop shows that they have detected 
a weakness in their teacher’s ability to control. 

Now we turn to another teacher who has her room 
ready to be dismissed. There is not the slightest indi¬ 
cation of anxiety in her expression, and perhaps none 
in her soul. There are two or three leaders, who 
would like to stamp their feet, but when the teacher 
looks at them and says, “ Hope you will enjoy your¬ 
selves on the playground,” their mischief fades away, 
for such personal interest as this teacher shows makes 
it impossible to stamp the feet. One boy, only, shows 
signs of being noisy; he stands next to the head of 
the line. All is ready; the teacher says in a quiet 
way, “ Pass,” but as she does so, she removes the 
intruder from the line quietly; it is done so gently. 
As the children pass, each looks in a good humor at 
the boy who is waiting to be put on the rear end of 
the line. Not a word is said to him, but he has felt 
his teacher’s power, and hereafter he will know how 
to act, for a wise boy, like a wise man, always learns 
something when he makes a mistake. 


IN THE SCHOOLROOM. 


99 


IV. Punishments .— The moments in which pun¬ 
ishments are to be meted out are critical ones in a 
schoolroom, and I hesitate in advising on this point. 
It depends largely upon the child, community, offense, 
and teacher, what punishment shall be inflicted. In 
some communities the people thrash their wheat to 
get the good qualities out of it, and thrash their chil¬ 
dren to get good qualities into them. When I asked 
a parent if his children had a good teacher, he said: 
“ Yes, sir; he makes them stand around, no foolin’ 
this winter; scarcely a day passes that he doesn’t whip 
someone.” The parent could have given no better 
evidence that the teacher was a failure, if he must 
punish every day; it indicated that something was 
wrong. If the teacher must punish, let it be retrib¬ 
utive punishment,— a punishment that pays back 
for something done. This is the natural way, and 
the child can see some justice in it. To illustrate: 
A bright but very quick-tempered little boy became 
so angry at being sent back to his room from the line 
one day, that he threw his cap' so forcibly at the teach¬ 
er’s desk as to upset an inkstand and sent the contents 
over desk, chair, and floor. He had been talked to a 
great deal about his lack of self-control, so his teacher 
simply said, “ I am sorry, Willie, but this must all 
be cleaned up nicely before you can go home. She 
provided water, broom, cloth, and soap, and Willie 
worked faithfully one and one-half hours to repair 
damages. He made no objections, but cried most of 
the time truly repentant tears. 

A good teacher does not need to punish much„ 
for he will avoid getting a reputation for liking to 


L. »f C. 


IOO 


CRITICAL MOMENTS 


punish. We ought to abhor it, and seek the minimum 
amount of punishment. There may be some other 
remedy that will answer better. When the Canada this¬ 
tle made its appearance in Pennsylvania, the farmers 
tried to crush it out of existence; different methods 
were used in order to destroy it, but the more they 
tried to root out the evil, the more it grew. At last 
it was discovered that one crop of wheat was what' 
was needed to entirely destroy the obnoxious plant. 
How suggestive, the best of grain to destroy a great 
evil. There is the greatest benefit arising from planting 
good thoughts, good aspirations, and good resolutions 
in the children. These will destroy the evil things in 
the child nature. It is worth a great deal to a teacher 
to know when it is necessary to punish and how to 
punish. 

A manufacturer in Lowell, Mass., employed two 
thousand men. One day something got wrong with 
the machinery, and it stopped. For his mill to stand 
idle for a single hour meant a great loss of money to 
the owner. 

No one could detect the trouble in the machinery, 
and it was necessary to send to Boston for a master 
mechanic. When he arrived, he took a little hammer 
and tapped along on the pipes and cylinders and boil¬ 
ers until he found the difficulty. In ten minutes he 
had it fixed and the machinery went on as before. It 
was astonishing that such a little thing should stop 
the whole works. When the owner came to pay the 
man, he found his bill to be $50.50. “ Now/’ said the 
owner, “ I am willing to pay the bill or any bill you 
demand, but tell me why you charge such a sum? ” 


IN THE SCHOOLROOM. 


101 


The mechanic replied, “ I charge fifty cents for the 
work and fifty dollars for knowing how.” There is 
a good lesson in this reply for the teacher. The 
knowing how is sometimes worth more to us than the 
work itself. There are certain offenses that must be 
looked after in the schoolroom, such as destroying 
property, wasting time, tattling, quarreling, stubborn¬ 
ness, etc. It may be necessary to punish for repe¬ 
titions of these. If so, the teacher should not punish 
the offender in the presence of other pupils. If she 
does, she will be defeated in her purpose; a boy is 
bolder in the presence of others, a girl will be more 
stubborn, and she won’t answer questions that are 
asked her. Some children will have to be told many 
times not to do certain things, others only once. John 
Wesley was once listening to his wife giving their 
son a lesson, and noticed that she had to tell him 
over and over again. At last he said, impatiently, 
“ Why do you tell that stupid child the same thing 
twenty times ? ” Because,” said the patient mother, 
“ nineteen times is not enough.” 

Some of the readers of this chapter have read the 
story of the Tyrolese minstrel who taught a bullfinch 
to whistle the Marseillaise. The minstrel made a wan¬ 
dering tour through France, and he wanted to make a 
fortune by having his bird “ trill the French National 
air.” 

He took the bird into an inner chamber of a de¬ 
serted castle where no sound from the outer world 
could reach them. Taking his violin, he played the 
“ Marseillaise.” One hundred times a day he played 
the grand old tune without varying a note or pitch. 


102 


CRITICAL MOMENTS 


For one hundred successive days he played the 
tune, and one hundred times each day; and after these 
ten thousand repetitions of the tune, the bullfinch whis¬ 
tled it instinctively. The tune had become a part of 
the bird’s nervous system. His very muscles and vocal 
chords had grown into the rhythm of the tune. He 
had formed the unconscious habit of breathing to the 
tune, and when he opened his mouth, he could not 
help whistling it. So you will find children under 
your charge who will have to be told over and over 
and over again to do some things and not to do other 
things; this will have to be done until they form habits 
of attention and concentration. As to the character 
of the punishments, the person, the place, the offense, 
the existing circumstances will have to be considered, 
and it depends largely upon the pupils and teacher. I 
have often been asked what I thought of “ keeping 
in ” at recess and after school as a punishment. It 
is used because our forefathers punished in that way, 
not because there is much good in it, but because it 
is an easy way out of a difficulty. A little boy who 
came late to school one morning gave a very good 
excuse for his tardiness. He had been “ kept in ” the 
evening before, and when the teacher said, “ Sammie, 
you are half hour late this morning,” his reply was, 
Yes, sir, I was half hour late getting home last 
night.” 

Pupils sometimes remain in poorly ventilated 
schoolrooms so long that their faculties become so 
dull that they could scarcely tell their own names. 
They blunder in their recitations and are required to 
remain at recess, and study their lessons. What they 


IN THE SCHOOLROOM. 


103 


really need is to run and jump and yell and get 
some fresh air and new life. A little skill in seating 
pupils sometimes prevents many offenses. When a 
teacher finds that pupils near each other will talk or 
otherwise interrupt the work of the school, then those 
pupils should be put farther apart. Private talks with 
pupils is more effective than scolding and lecturing, 
and teachers who punish the least will have the least 
of it to do. 

V. Closing Hoar .— The last hour of the day is 
usually the hardest time of the day, and is a critical 
period. 

Children become tired in mind and body and there¬ 
fore restless, and it is a hard task to hold them at that 
time, and give instruction from three to four o’clock, 
and yet the teacher can not afford to be lax in these 
closing hours. In towns and villages, and also in the 
country on pleasant days, the little ones should be dis¬ 
missed earlier in the day than the older pupils. This 
will afford some relief to the teacher, and she can 
throw more power into the last recitations. During 
the last hours of each day teachers will find that on 
the character of the final recitations depends the suc¬ 
cess of the day. 


VIII. 


BLUE MONDAY. 

The reader may think this a peculiar topic to treat, 
but the writer wishes to treat of topics which lie very 
near to the teacher’s work. Out of my own experi¬ 
ence and from testimonies of scores of teachers, and 
from the untold troubles of those to whom I have 
never spoken on the subject, I recognize that there 
is no day in 'the week that is more trying to the teacher 
than ‘ Monday.” The other days appear like hours 
as compared with Monday, which sometimes seems to 
be as a “ thousand years,” and to a great many teachers 
it is Blue Monday. 

Teachers will sometimes go to their schoolrooms 
on that day in anything but a proper frame of mind 
for the work. Since leaving the schoolroom on Fri¬ 
day they have passed through a variety of experi¬ 
ences — entertaining company, or perhaps being en¬ 
tertained ; attending social meetings, shopping perhaps 
on Saturday — seeing hundreds of articles, all of 
which leave an impression upon the mind. Then 
comes Sunday with all its duties in the church, in 
the Sabbath-school and in the “ Young People’s meet¬ 
ings ”— Sunday is the day Americans feast the most, 
and take the least exercise. These and numerous other 
things which are perfectly legitimate, have been ex¬ 
perienced since the children were dismissed from school 
on Friday evening. Monday morning arrives. How 
104 


BLUE MONDAY. 


105 


does it find the average teacher? Rested from the 
former week’s work? Blithe and gay? Are the men¬ 
tal powers quickened and the faculties all alert? Are 
these the conditions in which you find the average 
teacher on Monday morning? Such conditions are 
required on the other mornings of the week, if the 
best work possible is done. 

If the teacher enters the schoolroom on Monday 
morning in a state of mind entirely different from 
what it was the preceding Friday, it will be im¬ 
possible to take up the thread of work where he left 
off, even if it were a proper thing to do. Not only 
the teacher but the pupils as well have been dissipat¬ 
ing or attending to duties about home; their minds 
have been occupied in other lines, so that when Mon¬ 
day comes, the minds of teacher and pupils are in a 
chaotic state. It takes some teachers all that day to 
get into sympathy with their work, and they come 
out in the evening after having had many a conflict. 

Every teacher knows something of “ dark days ” 
in the schoolroom — the spirit of evil seems to have 
taken possession of the whole school; everything goes 
wrong; every sound is piercing; the door slams; the 
ink spills; children laugh at nothing; visitors come 
and drive the teacher wild by talking in an under¬ 
tone to each other; slates drop from careless hands; 
books have been forgotten and left at home; the spirit 
of misrule reigns triumphant. My suggestion to 
young teachers especially, is, “ Do not lose heart, and 
conclude you are a failure as a teacher.’ Wait: an¬ 
other day of a very different kind is coming. Tuesday 
will be bright, and everybody will fall into line and 


io6 


BLUE MONDAY. 


the week will pass swiftly, and by Friday you say to 
yourself, “ Teaching is indeed a delightful task.” 
What was the difference? I’ll tell you. — On Mon¬ 
day, teachers are apt to notice every little transgres-' 
sion, and sharply rebuke every child that seems to 
be dull or frivolous or careless. A little fellow is 
called to stand on the floor, or receive some other 
punishment for a little misdemeanor, which on other 
days would not be noticed. A boy fourteen years of 
age said to his principal, to whom he had been sent one 
Monday afternoon for punishment, “ I can get along 
all right in school every day except Monday, and I 
think my teacher is to blame for a part of my trouble. 
She lets her temper fly at me, and I fight back. If 
she would be kind, I would be obedient. On Mon¬ 
day she is always ‘ nagging.’ If we do the best we 
can, she is always sorry we can’t do better. She is 
always noticing the wrongs and never sees the rights 
we do. Somebody is always kept in on Monday in 
her room, so she will have some one to ‘ scold.’ ” 

Now this possibly was a just criticism of the 
teacher. If once pupils get the idea that the teacher 
constantly finds fault, they will become hardened and 
unfeeling, and talking will have no effect. Scolding on 
the part of the teacher is weakness; it is lack of self- 
control. As frost kills the premature buds and keeps 
back the others, so scolding kills the tender emo¬ 
tions, and represses the better impulses. There is no 
enterprise in which investments yield so small a profit 
as that of scolding. The teacher who indulges in 
this business makes himself and all about him un¬ 
happy, without the hope of alleviation. It is feared 


BLUE MONDAY. 


107 


that many children suffer in their moral feelings from 
scoldings received at the hand of some teacher or 
parent. A blacksmith who was accustomed to scold 
his family quite freely and regularly, was, one day, 
attempting to harden a piece of steel, but failing after 
two or three attempts, his son, who had been observing 
the trial, said, “ Scold it, father, scold it; if that don’t 
harden it nothing else will.” 

No other day in the week requires skill to such 
an important degree as does Monday, and of all the 
departments which the whole business of teaching 
comprehends, that of self-control is the most impor¬ 
tant. 

The great need of our schools is to find teacher^ 
behind the desks who have learned self-control. Teach¬ 
ers will fill their pathway with the worst kind of 
thorns, by being unguarded in their talk; they threaten 
when it is uncalled for, and they themselves get the 
worst of it, while their authority is scattered to the 
four winds. The teacher who frets over trifles shows 
a great weakness. A principal said to one of hisj 
teachers, who always seemed so calm and serene, “You 
never get angry, do you? ” “ Angry,” said the young 
lady, “ You don’t know what storms go on within 
my nature.” 

Guard against any extra directions on Monday, 
yea, I would say guard against extra directions any 
day in the week. A county superintendent said: 
“ What a foolish remark I made one Monday to my 
pupils. It had rained on Saturday, and on Sunday 
it had turned to snow and had frozen very hard all 
day and night. 


io8 


BLUE MONDAY. 


“ My schoolhouse stood on a hillside, and just be¬ 
low was a large field and a little lake at the bottom 
of the hill. The sledding was fine below the school- 
house. The pupils would go down the hill and out 
onto the little lake. I said, just before dismissing at 
noon, ‘ The boy or girl who slides down the hill 
after the bell rings I will whip.’ When I went to 
the door to ring the bell, fifteen of the largest boys 
and girls were sitting on their sleds ready to go, 
just as they started I rang the bell, and away they 
went down the hill and across the lake, while the 
echoes of the bell died away in the distance. Oh, 
what a blunder I made, and what an afternoon of 
whipping, all on account of two mistakes I made. 
First, saying they must not ride down after the bell 
rang, and second blunder was in ringing the bell when 
they were just ready to start down the hill.” 

Obedience in the schoolroom is essential, but it 
does not come by threats and commands, and that 
teacher who tries to control by such tactics will find 
a hard road to travel. Three fourths of all the woes 
and trouble the teacher experiences, he brings upon 
himself by something he says. Many teachers are 
surprised at their own failures, and yet do not know 
or learn the fact that they pave their way to failure 
by untimely remarks. What shall be done on Blue 
Monday to make it a success? 

Review! Review!! REVIEW!!! Never Assign 
an Advanced Lesson for Monday .— If you do, many 
of the pupils will forget where the lessons are, and 
come unprepared to recitation, and the day will drag. 
But what an opportunity for reviewing,— orally, or, 


BLUE MONDAY. 


109 


perhaps, partly written; reviewing that which has been 
passed over in the branches. Thoughtful repetition 
alone can insure a thorough knowledge of the sub¬ 
jects. Not a merely mechanical repetition of exactly 
the same thing, however; but repetition with a meas¬ 
ure of thought in it which at each new doing or say¬ 
ing insures a clearer insight into the subject. One 
great fault in our teaching is that we go too fast 
over the branches. We are apt to think that chil¬ 
dren’s minds grasp subjects as easily as do ours, and 
when we understand a subject, we are so apt to think 
the pupils do also. But they do not. There are al¬ 
ways some in the class who need things made very 
plain, and that is a good quality. There are many 
things in the New Testament which would not have 
been made so plain to us had it not been for Andrew, 
one of the apostles. He was always asking questions 
of the Saviour, and while Christ made things plainer 
to Andrew and the other disciples, he also made them 
plain for us. Many truths were made richer because of 
Andrew’s questions. So in every school there are 
Andrews who must have things thoroughly explained 
before they can understand the subject, and this is not 
a loss of time. Very frequently there are members of 
classes found who acknowledge that they understand 
subjects, when in reality they are not clear to many 
of the pupils. 

How, then, shall we begin the work on Monday ? — 
With music; with singing: that is the way the sum¬ 
mer birds begin their daily life, and with a song they 
seek their food. If you are near a forest in the very 
early twilight, you will hear a chirp from some tall. 


I IO 


BLUE MONDAY. 


tree where the first rays of the morning light strike, 
then a twitter among the lower branches, until in a 
few minutes all the birds in the woods are aroused, 
and a whole orchestra of song greets your hearing.. 
As the daybreak brightens into morning the songs 
grow stronger and sweeter. Begin the morning with 
a song, especially on Monday morning have plenty 
of music. It prepares the mind for receiving truth. 
The better emotions of the being are quickened by 
beautiful songs. You say, “ you can’t sing,” and 
would not dare try to lead the school in a song. Every 
school has one or more boys and girls who can sing 
well enough to pitch the tunes; they will be glad to 
do it, and the others will enjoy joining in the songs. 
“ What will you sing?” Sing what the children 
know. Sing “ America; ” if all children who can sing 
at all can’t sing “ America,” they have been wonder¬ 
fully neglected, and it is time they were taught the 
national hymn. Every neighborhood has musical se¬ 
lections which everybody knows; sing those — sing a 
great deal on Monday . 

“What else shall be done on Monday?” Review 
the class in arithmetic, and the classes in number 
work. Have you a class in fractions, give the class 
questions not found in your text-book in use, but 
problems similar to those and from some other text¬ 
book, or some you make yourself, which will be better 
still. This is the day in which to test the pupils, but 
that is not all. It is the day to test your own work, 
to see if the instruction you have given during the 
past week has been thorough and clear to the pupils.. 

The period for Arithmetic may be used and not 


BLUE MONDAY. 


111 

squandered in reviewing part of arithmetic passed 
over. It is a good plan to have pupils make problems 
for each other; this will add a double interest in the 
work. With those in number work the exercises can 
be varied — problems being given that seem to have 
life in them; viz., “If Mary (naming some one in 
school) goes to a store in town (name one) with 25 
cents, and buys hair-pins for 5 cents, ribbon for 5 
cents, a thimble for 3 cents, pencil for 2 cents, how 
many cents will she have left ? ” 

Then, abstractedly, draw a square with a circle 
in the center. Place figure 4 or any other in it, and 
other figures around the square. Children will add 
4 and 3; 4 and 8; 4 and 2, etc. Then the process of 
subtraction may be practiced, as 10 less 4; 7 less 4; 4 
less 2, etc., and so with other processes. The figure in 
the circle may be changed a number of times. Children 
will be delighted with this kind of work. It develops 
the powers for thinking and observation. This work 
can be done by the individual pupil, or in concert, or 
both. The seat work, or busy work, as we call it in 
modern terms, may be put on the board, and the pupils’ 
work on slate or paper. No discipline is needed when 
children have intelligent, busy work before them. 
Better to prevent disorder in a schoolroom by work 
than to cure cases of disorder arising from idleness. 
Preventing is more benevolent than curing. 

Thousands would have died of smallpox had not 
Jenner dicovered the virtues of vaccination. Pasteur 
won great honors by his discovery of a remedy for 
hydrophobia; his discoveries for the prevention of dis¬ 
ease among domestic animals and among silkworms 


112 


BLUE MONDAY. 


have saved millions of dollars for France; his name 
will be written among the greatest benefactors of the 
human race. To prevent a boy from becoming a 
criminal is far better than shooting or hanging him 
after he has become a criminal. The teacher becomes 
master of the situation on Monday, because he pre¬ 
vents disorder and idleness by giving plenty of at¬ 
tractive work. Busy children are happy children, and 
Monday may be made the happiest day of the week 
for them. 

What shall be done in geography on Monday? 
We will suppose the lesson for the past week ha£ 
been on “ Pennsylvania,” or any other state. One 
day you had the soil for the lessons; another day the 
rivers; another, the minerals; and still another, the 
animals or vegetation. Certainly the thoughtful, prac¬ 
tical teacher would find the review of these topics 
exceedingly valuable. Have pupils write on black¬ 
board or paper or slate, using such topics as coal, iron, 
salt, wheat, cotton, a city, or a river. It gives the 
pupil a chance to sum up what he knows, and noth¬ 
ing can please him more than to find out he has learned 
so much. The scope of the geography review on Mon¬ 
day is really unlimited in extent, and the most profit¬ 
able day’s work of the week may be experienced by 
teacher and pupils. 

How about the review in history? Here is a rich 
field for review. Have you been dealing with early 
explorers and discoveries? Then you have much that 
needs to be repeated and reviewed in order that pu¬ 
pils may remember it. Monday is the day on which 


BLUE MONDAY. 


1 13 

to do this work. Give one the topic “ De Leon ” to 
write on; another, “Balboa;” let another draw a 
map showing the voyages of Columbus, marking the 
routes with dotted lines and his landing-places with 
crosses. Let one trace on the map De Soto's line 
of wandering through Florida and the other states 
to the Mississippi. 

Have the lessons of the past week been on one 
or more of the Colonies? Then spend Monday re¬ 
telling the stories of the settlements of Jamestown 
and Plymouth. Do you know some story found out¬ 
side of your text-book about these colonies; tell it 
to the class on Monday. Let someone read or re¬ 
cite, “ Landing of the Pilgrims,” by Felicia Hemans; 
or the poem, “Jamestown,” by Paulding; or Mrs. 
Sigourney's “ Pocahontas.” What a field for review 
in the literature of the colonies. 

Spend a part of one Monday in the review of 
“dates in history,”—1492, 1502, 1512, 1541, 1565, 
1607, 1613, 1620, 1634, 1643, e t c - Let pupils write a 
statement about each of these dates, or as many as they 
can, or let the pupils select their own dates, and write 
about them. Children are not expected to memorize 
dates by the quantity any more than they are to memo¬ 
rize the words of any text-book — either would be in¬ 
jurious to the mind. Children learn dates incidently 
and in the repetition of facts. In history, dates cling 
to the mind as steel filings cling to the magnet. I 
have frequently tested classes on this, and found them 
very apt in recalling scores of dates in history. In a 
wardrobe we have hooks and pegs upon which we 


BLUE MONDAY. 


114 

hang our clothes; in history we use dates as pegs and 
hooks on which we may hang the facts of history. 
Dates are as important in history as bones to the hu¬ 
man body; indeed, we might say that dates form the 
bony structure of history and are important only in 
connection with facts. Monday is the day for re¬ 
viewing the campaigns, settlements, wars, acquisition 
of territory, etc. Great, indeed, is the field for re¬ 
viewing in the subject of history. 

Then the physiology, and spelling, and reading, and 
other branches. If our time is all used in some such 
way as has been indicated, Monday will not be “ Blue 
Monday,” but, instead, it will be a red-letter day to 
your school. More work will be done on that day 
than any other, the time will pass rapidly, and one 
of the great bugbears of the teacher’s profession will 
be removed. 

I have read of a teacher who never tried to adapt) 
himself to the conditions which confront every teacher 
on Monday, and to him that day was a continual 
conflict. He could not sleep Sunday nights for think¬ 
ing of the morrow, and then he could not sleep Mon¬ 
day night for thinking over the campaigns and battles 
of the day, and then on other nights he taught school 
all night in his dreams, and arose in the morning 
unfit for the work of the day. 

Troubles which never come are the ones which 
give us the greatest uneasiness; borrowed troubles 
are the ones which worry us the most; and in hear¬ 
ing some of the troubles of teachers rehearsed, one 
is sure to recall the old fable of the man and the 
foggy morning, which runs as follows: “As I was 


BLUE MONDAY. 


11 5 

walking up a mountain, very early, one foggy morn¬ 
ing, I saw something on the mountainside so strange 
looking I was afraid; it looked like some huge mon¬ 
ster. When I came nearer to it, I found it to be a 
man, and, behold when I came very near the man, 
I found it was my brother.” 

So with teachers; sometimes they see dangers in 
every shadow that passes; they try to cross the bridges 
before reaching them; they become frightened at 
things that have no existence, nor ever can have. 
If, instead of such worry, the teacher would spend 
more time in planning the work to keep children busy, 
how much it would promote the cause of education? 
Monday, usually so dull and gloomy, with machinery 
hard to move, can be transformed into a day of de¬ 
lightful instruction. 


IX. 


WHAT MAKES A TEACHER VALUABLE? 

I. What He Knows .— To the question: What 
makes a teacher valuable ? a great many answers could 
be given, all of which might be true, and yet it is best 
to try again and again to attempt to answer the ques¬ 
tion. Some one says, “ It is what a teacher knows, 
that makes him valuable.” 

It is unquestionably true that the person intend¬ 
ing to teach can not know too much; no one has ever 
failed for this reason, though I have read of a 
man who explained his failure in the high school 
work by claiming that it was because he was so well 
fit toil for college work; 1 have also heard of a lawyer 
who was invariably beaten in justice courts because 
he said he had prepared himself with such complete¬ 
ness for supreme court practice. Allowing such per¬ 
sons all the credit due them, 1 still believe that no one 
was ever injured for good work in the schoolroom by 
having too good a preparation. 

But many have a thorough knowledge of almost 
all branches and yet have not been considered valuable 
teachers. The knowledge of the subjects to be taught 
alone, will never secure success to any one. A 
teacher's knowledge of the subjects taught, and his 
general information regarding other branches of study, 
help to make a teacher valuable, but to know human 
nature is of more value. 


no 


WHAT MAKES A TEACHER VALUABLE? H7 


There are successful lawyers whose/eminence in 
the court room is based less upon their knowledge of 
the law than their thorough knowledge of human 
nature. The merchant studies his customers and soon 
learns their likes and dislikes. A skillful clerk will 
make a thorough study of human nature. To illus¬ 
trate: There is in a large city a merchant who is a 
very pious man, and has scripture reading and prayer 
with his clerks before going to business in the morn¬ 
ings. He has this as a standing rule in his store: 
“ Never make two prices for the same article. ” One 
day a lady came to buy a shawl. A number of shawls 
were laid on the counter, but they were not expensive 
enough. “ We have other shawls,” said the clerk. 
He brought other shawls just like the first ones, and 
doubled the price on them. The woman was delighted 
and took one. The owner of the establishment stand¬ 
ing by saw the whole transaction, and said to the clerk, 
“ Young man, you have broken our standing rule, and 
made two prices for the same article.” “ Yes,” said 
the skillful clerk, * I acted on the principle of the 
scripture you read this morning,” She was a stranger 
and I took her in.” 

The successful teacher must know the character¬ 
istics of the individual pupil under her charge. “ In¬ 
stead of forty children acting like one child, she will 
find more likely each child acting like forty children.” 
And to treat a class of forty pupils as though each 
of the forty were an exact mental, moral, and physical 
facsimile of the other thirty-nine, will turn out to be 
a wrong view of human nature. Children can not 
hide their natures, and the observing teacher will soon 
learn the bent of each individual mind. 


118 WHAT MAKES A TEACHER VALUABLE? 


The teacher makes a mistake who tries to suppress 
natural tendencies instead of guiding and directing 
them. 

Human activities and emotions are natural forces, 
and can no more be destroyed than any of the phys¬ 
ical forces, and that teacher is best who makes the 
most of the pupil’s own particular genius, who lends 
his personal influence in directing the activities of the 
mind in proper channels. In the ordinary school an 
artificial course of procedure is followed, and a pupil 
may follow it and the teacher not know whether he is 
morally good or bad. Brandt, the terrible Indian 
chief who led the attack on Wyoming, was a graduate 
of Oxford, and it was said of him that in the prepar¬ 
atory school and college he gave no sign of the wicked 
nature that was in him. It is sometimes a matter of 
remark that the best scholar is the worst one, morally 
measured. In Yale college it was proposed some years 
age to make moral character an element to be consid¬ 
ered in the distribution of rewards; this, while much' 
discussed, was not done, however. The occasion of 
it was a young man who carried off the highest honors, 
and yet was known to be thoroughly bad. 

It is not the province of the teacher to transform 
the pupil into anything unnatural, but his duty to 
make the character under his control self-reliant and 
strong in its own powers. Many a child who is cele¬ 
brated for dangerous fits of temper at home becomes 
entirely transformed under the influence of a kindly 
teacher who knows something of human nature. It 
is well, when the pupil disobeys, for the teacher not to 
be troubled, or to show to be disconcerted in the least. 


WHAT MAKES A TEACHER VALUABLE? H9 


A teacher had a boy who was rude and troublesome; 
she called him to her desk; he came, and while stand¬ 
ing about a yard away she looked him steadily in the 
eye, then she said, coolly and slowly, “ You may take 
your seat.” That boy felt his teacher’s mental force; 
it troubled him. After school he came up, and said, 
” I don’t see what you called me up for; I haven't done 
anything.” Now for the tact. She looked him coolly 
in the eye again, and said, “ Come here again to-mor¬ 
row; I have nothing further to say at present.” At 
that time she had him in a state of mind where good 
judgment made him a helpful friend, and when he 
appeared the next day he came trembling before that 
teacher. He felt her power. This and the teacher’s 
influence must be supreme. A mother who met the 
children’s teacher, said, “ How do you get along so 
well with Jennie in school? She has never minded 
me well, and I have so much trouble with her, but I 
never hear any trouble with her at school. I wish you 
would tell me how you manage her.” Hear an ideal 
teacher’s answer. “ I always expect Jennie to obey 
me, and she does.” “ But,” said her mother, “ don’t 
she refuse to do her work when you give it to her?” 
“ I take for granted,” said the teacher, “ that my chil¬ 
dren are going to do what I ask them. Time enough 
to watch them when they fail to do the work. But 
they do not fail. I should not want to be watched and 
suspected if I were in their place, and so I let them see 
that I believe in them.” The mother went away puz¬ 
zled but feeling certain that if this teacher should ask 
her to do anything with that bright, confident way 
of hers she should certainly do it. 


120 WHAT MAKES A TEACHER VALUABLE? 


There is a constant force in that teacher who stud¬ 
ies her pupils. Often the smallest act on the part of 
a child will stand as a key to the child’s whole nature, 
and by it the teacher can judge what is best for the 
child, and on that lay the foundation for a most valu¬ 
able life. 

II. What He Can Do .— Some persons affirm that 
“ a teacher’s value is determined by what he can do.” 
Mr. Browning’s estimate of a man or woman lay in, 
“ not what they refrain from, but what each can do.”' 
This is also the Bible judgment. The man with the 
one talent began to make excuses, but the master criti¬ 
cised him for what he had not done to make the world 
better. 

There is a great difference between knowing a 
thing and being able to do it. This applies with 
peculiar force to teaching and other professions. A 
physician who can not set a broken bone or cure a 
case of simple sore throat will not inspire much con¬ 
fidence in patients. The physician in Robner’s 
Satires could always tell at once the Greek name of a 
disease, but was never able to suggest a remedy or a 
cure. If a teacher can not give satisfaction in the most 
elementary phases of his work, what guarantee is there 
that he is doing wonderful things in matters too elus¬ 
ive for any human tests. 

The great masterpieces in painting, sculpture, arch¬ 
itecture, and music reveal perfection in the smallest 
and least essential elements. It is right that teachers 
should be asked to produce certain evidence of certain 
results, and to be able to give certain reasons for the 
things they do. To arouse and develop the moral 


WHAT MAKES A TEACHER VALUABLE? 121 


elements, to get into sympathy with the children, to 
get a strong hold on their inner life and strengthen 
the character so that it becomes self-controlled, is far 
more than ability to give good lessons, and when the 
teacher puts her actual self into the task, it is no longer 
a task but a joy. 

“ He is a good teacher, but can not control his 
school,” is a criticism we hear so often. Can a teacher 
be valuable and lack the power to govern? More 
complaints are lodged against teachers for being un¬ 
able to govern their schools than all other causes! 
combined. The patient, cautious, just teacher has no 
trouble in governing children. They yield readily to 
a clearheaded, kindhearted, resolute person who knows 
what he wants, and takes proper steps to secure it. 
And the first step toward becoming a good disciplin¬ 
arian is to have a proper idea of what to do. A teacher 
without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder,— 
simply drifts with the tide. 

How great is the work of the teacher! Who can 
measure its effects upon the children, upon commun¬ 
ities, or upon states? 

Not many years ago a young man was called to 
be principal of a school in a village. He was a bright 
young man, and was capable of something higher, and 
people wondered that he should bury himself in such 
an isolated place, since there was no intellectual life 
or movement in that community. The town boys had 
been content to get a little learning, and then drift off 
into any work that offered. The people felt that 
“ schooling ” at the academy was enough for their 
children. No one had gone to college from that place 


22 WHAT MAKES A TEACHER VALUABLE? 


for years, and all inspiration to do work of a high 
grade was lacking. But in two years’ time the young 
teacher had worked a revolution among the people and 
the pupils. The whole community was aroused at the 
success of the school. Pupils flocked in from the! 
country, and the school grew so large that two assist¬ 
ants were necessary. The teacher had effected an 
“ educational revival.” But the crowning triumph in 
the eyes of this earnest, devoted teacher, was the desire 
for a higher education that he had aroused in three 
boys who prepared themselves for college under hist 
instruction. This was but the beginning, for other 
boys, fired by the example of the three who went away 
to college, desired the higher education. The whole 
community seemed to acquire a thirst for knowledge, 
and right on that point we are lead to say that too 
many young people finish their school life without 
having acquired any thirst for advanced educational 
advantages. In the broad fields of knowledge they 
seem to see nothing they care to obtain, and they go 
out into the world with no serious thought that the 
school is only the ante-room of education. 

The teacher, therefore, who does the greatest work 
is the one who inspires, by his presence and useful 
knowledge, others to acquire higher ideals and broader 
views of life as well as the best, practical education. 

III. What He Is .— Someone affirms that u What 
a teacher is ” makes him valuable,— what he is intel¬ 
lectually, physically, morally, and socially, to which 
might be added, his training as a teacher. Someone 
has also said that, a teacher should be “ affable, benevo¬ 
lent, courteous, deserving, exacting, firm, genteel, 


WHAT MAKES A TEACHER VALUABLE? 123 


humorous, industrious, judicious, kind, lenient, 
modest, noble, observing, prompt, quick, robust, 
skillful, true, unfailing, vigilant, warm-hearted, youth¬ 
ful, and zealous; but to this definition, long as it may 
be, should be added that a teacher should be a gentle¬ 
man or lady in the broadest sense,— a person may 
have all the characteristics I have named and yet be 
unfit to teach. The teacher may lack the most of them 
and yet be a great power in the schoolroom. The 
living example of the teacher is more potent sometimes 
than much learning, for it does not make so much dif¬ 
ference what a child learns as from whom he learns it. 
We can not estimate the influence of the surroundings 
upon children. We know that in the plant life, that 
without rich soil, pure air, the heat and light of the 
sun, and the moisture of dew and rain, no plant will 
live. We know that if we throw a pebble into a lake, 
although the waves it creates may be small, yet they 
will exert an influence until they reach the shores. 
They may be met by other waves and be modified, yet 
the effect is entirely obliterated. “ A cloud arose in 
the west, the wind directed it eastward and blew 
down an acorn, the cloud poured it rain down on the 
earth, the acorn received a drop; it in turn quenched 
the thirst of a little bird; it in turn plumed its wings 
and flew upon a little limb beside a window and 
poured forth its tender and joyous carol, and thus 
gave inspiration to the poet to indite a joyous chant 
that has cheered and comforted thousands of human 
beings.” The mountain dweller does not know that it 
is nature that has made him a lover of liberty and of 
home, yet observant historians say this is the work of 


124 WHAT MAKES A TEACHER VALUABLE? 


nature. But personal influence is much greater than 
the influence of nature upon mankind, for it is as wide 
as the infinite itself. And so in the schoolroom, the 
garden of human plants, there should be found all the 
elements which will develop strong and beautiful char¬ 
acters. We partake more or less of our surroundings. 
None of us are responsible for our early surroundings. 
One child is born and reared in a good home, where it 
breathes an atmosphere of purity and refinement. An¬ 
other child is born in a hovel, in the midst of vice. 

The responsibility is very different in these places, 
because of the different environments. The teacher 
has nothing to do but recognize the difference, accept 
what comes, and mold the best character possible out 
of the material. Nourish the good, and through the 
influence of the teacher shape and control the thoughts 
and feelings of those who enter the schoolroom. The 
schoolroom must cultivate the whole nature of the 
child; not only the intellectual but the aesthetic and 
moral as well. Whenever a boy has learned to be con¬ 
scientious in the matter of clean hands, hair combed, 
and polished boots, then the teacher has a boy who has 
laid a good foundation for gentlemanly manners. His 
surroundings have begun to be felt, and he is building 
in a manner that will be felt in later years. 

A gentleman advertised for a boy to assist him in 
the office, and nearly fifty applicants presented them¬ 
selves before him. Out of the whole number he 
selected one, and dismissed the rest. 

“ I should like to know,” said a friend, “ on what 
ground you selected that boy, without a single recom¬ 
mendation?” “You are mistaken,” said the gentle- 


WHAT MAKES A TEACHER VALUABLE? 125 


man “ he has a great many. His manner is worth 
a hundred thousand dollars to him. He wiped his feet 
when he came in, and closed the door after him, show¬ 
ing that he was careful; gave up his seat to that lame 
old man, showing that he was thoughtful and kind; 
he took off his hat when he came in, answered my 
questions respectfully, showing that he was polite; 
he picked up a book I had purposely laid upon the 
floor, and replaced it upon the table, while all the 
others stepped over it or pushed it aside; and he waited 
quietly for his turn, instead of pushing or crowding,! 
showing that he was honest and orderly. When I 
talked with him, I noticed that his clothes, while not 
made of costly material, had been carefully brushed, 1 
his hair in nice order, and his face clean. When he 
wrote his name, I noticed that his hands were clean, 
and not dirty, like that handsome little fellow’s in the 
blue jacket. 

“ Don’t you call those things letters of recommen¬ 
dation ? I do; and I would give more for what I can 
tell of a boy by using my eyes ten minutes than all the 
letters of recommendation he could bring me, and 
I repeat that this boy whom I have chosen has man¬ 
ners that are worth more than a hundred thousand 1 
dollars to him.” That boy had inherited good quali¬ 
ties, and those nourished by the influence of some 
valuable teacher had made him first in the list of 
applicants. “ What a teacher is makes him valuable.” 
The sentiment is a good one. A school is likely to be 
shaped by what the teacher is more than by any other 
influence. To train up a child in the way he should 
go, it requires that the teacher-trainer should walk in 


126 WHAT MAKES A TEACHER VALUABLE? 

it himself. The teacher’s influence over children is 
greater than that of the parent, since it comes from a 
wider field, and hence more powerful and more contin¬ 
uous, like the influence of the sun upon the earth; it is 
greater than the minister’s, for he deals with those 
whose habits are formed, while the teacher deals with 
those who are in the formative period, and if the 
teacher is endowed with good judgment, a kind dispo¬ 
sition, a good mind, and crowned with a good char¬ 
acter, he will be able to acomplish wonders. His life is 
an open book,— a guide for those under his care. He 
is a born teacher, and loves the work because he sees 
those under h(is care growing into real men and 
women. I believe in the young person who is proud 
of the profession, and works as if the fate of the whole 
world depends upon him, and not be ashamed to teach, 
as did a couple of prominent ladies, who, when they 
went to spend a season at Atlantic City, asked the 
proprietor of the hotel that the fact be kept a pro¬ 
found secret. How often do teachers speak dis¬ 
paragingly of their own profession. 

There is no discredit in being a shoemaker, but there 
is in making a bad shoe. It is not the labor that 
dignifies the person, but the person who dignifies the 
work. After Epaminondas, a Grecian general, who 
led the “ Sacred Band ” in the battle of Leuctra which 
placed Thebes at the head of Greece, had gained the 
great victory, his enemies, who were in the majority, 
elected him the public scavenger of the city. The noble- 
spirited man accepted the office, saying, “ The place 
does not confer dignity upon the man, but the man 
on the place.” 


WHAT MAKES A TEACHER VALUABLE? 127 


I have read that those who heard the speeches of the 
great Lord Chatham always felt there was something 
finer in the man than in anything he said, and there are 
teachers whose very presence does more for the chil¬ 
dren than the instruction of many a brilliant educator. 
Without this personal influence and power, the general 
upon the field of battle, the lawyer before the jury, 
the minister in the pulpit, and the teacher in the school¬ 
room, must expect defeat. A lady teacher, when 
asked what she considered the happiest moment of her 
life as a teacher, replied, “ When a young man about 
to enter the minstry said to me, ‘ You made me what 
I am! It was not so much what you said or what you 
did, but what you are that gave me new ideas of life 
and life’s work.’ ” The example of many teachers is 
no doubt the chief element in shaping many destinies. 
The benedictions of many good teachers have fallen 
like the mantle of a prophet on thoughtful children, 
and as long as that influence lives they will have a 
foretaste of the life which is to come. “ You made 
me what I am ”— was that not a tribute worth recall¬ 
ing? Such a teacher saw beyond the text-book; she 
was an unconscious worker, and her vision was not 
limited by the horizon of the subjects she taught, but 
in her work she budded three tabernacles,—one for the 
pupils, one for the teacher, and one for Him that is 
a friend of all children and Teacher of all teachers. 


X 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 

What Richard III said of himself on a memor¬ 
able occasion may be said of us all, namely, that 
“ we come into the world half made up.” Among 
other things we lack are teeth, the power to walk, 
and the power to talk. The colt or the calf, when 
a day old, can frisk about, and it apparently knows 
more about the world at that age than the child after 
he has dwelt upon the earth for a year. 

During the first years of a child’s life impressions 
are being made; “ it doth not yet appear what he 
shall be,” but we know that the perception is devel¬ 
oping, and he is able to distinguish persons, to meas¬ 
ure height and weight, and to take delight in color 
and sound; he perceives that he is not so tall as his 
little brother, that a red apple is more pleasant to 
the eye than a green one, and that there is something in 
music that thrills his soul; and yet he may not be 
able to tell how he knows any of these things. At 
first confused images were presented, but as they grow 
clearer, he begins to compare and discriminate. By 
his observation of the big world about him, he begins 
to feel other powers developing in him; he remembers 
the dog’s name, he knows a book from a box, he 
chooses the biggest piece of cake On the plate. This 
shows that discrimination begins at a very early age. 
It is astonishing also how early the individual traits 
and peculiarities of dispositions begin to show them- 
128 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 


29 


selves, and his temper to be apparent,— whether he 
will be ill-tempered or mild, obedient or obstinate. 
During the first years he is accumulating experience, 
and a multitude of sensations are being stored in his 
little memory. He discovers that the fire burns, that 
the wind blows, that the sun shines, that it grows 
dark at night, that he gets hungry, that over-eating 
causes distress, and often leads his parents to give him 
disagreeable medicine. He soon becomes a marvelous 
reader of human nature, he learns how to move his 
mother and how to persuade his father. The child 
that does not know, when it is two years ot age, which 
of its parents is most easily imposed upon, will never 
amount to much. 

Maurice and Harry had been rude to their mama. 
She put them to bed earlier than usual, and then com¬ 
plained to their papa about them. He started up the 
stairway. They heard him coming. “ Here comes 
papa,” said Maurice, “ I shall pretend to be asleep.” 
“ I shan’t,” said Harry, “ I shall get up and'put some¬ 
thing on.” 

At a very early age the child studies the cause 
and effect of things, and sits in judgment on the ac¬ 
tions of others. 

Little Charley had been very naughty, and was im¬ 
prisoned for an hour in the kitchen wood-box. He 
speedily began to amuse himself with chips and splin¬ 
ters, and was playing quite busily and happily, when 
a neighbor entered the house by the way of the kitchen. 
“ Charley,” she cried, “what are you doing there?” 
“ Nothing,” said Charley, “ mama’s just been having 


9 


130 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 


one of her bad spells.” His father said to him on 
one occasion, “ Now, Charley, I have whipped you 
only for your own good. I believe I have only done 
my duty. Tell me, what do you think, yourself?” 
“ If I should tell you,” said Charley, “ you’d give 
me another whipping.” With all his faults, this Char¬ 
ley had a vein of sympathy in his nature which mani¬ 
fested itself often. For instance: one day he and 
his younger brother, Arthur, had been seated at the 
dinner table, when Charley saw but one orange on 
the table, and immediately burst into a wail that 
brought his mother to the scene. “ Why, child,” said 
his mother, “what are you crying for?” “Because 
there ain’t any orange for Arthur,” said Charley. 

How early in life, children learn the art of imi¬ 
tation. This is shown in speech, in manner of walk¬ 
ing, in the tone of voice, in the expression of the eye, 
or by a single gesture. Sometimes this imitation be¬ 
comes ludicrous. A little boy who had attended class- 
meetings a number of times at the Methodist church, 
gathered a lot of his associates about him for the 
purpose of holding class-meetings under a shade tree. 
He was only five years old, and gave the firs: testi¬ 
mony thus: “ Brethren and sisters, I have been a 
humble follower of the Lord nigh unto thirty-five 
years, and regret that I did not start in the good 
way sooner. Pray for me.” Is this not an echo of 
a testimony of some good Christian you have heard? 

We are prone in our mature self-conceit to think 
of the children as the embodiment of ignorance, and 
yet if we listen to their words, we will often be struck 
with the clearness of their insight. They sometimes 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 


13 


touch upon the deepest problems of human experience 
and of our relations to the divine. A little girl, when 
she heard the minister say in his sermon that '* Satan 
was the wicked one running around to destroy the 
good,” and then heard him say in the same sermon that 
“ God could do all things,” asked her mamma, “ Why 
don’t God kill the devil and then there would be 
no evil one?” The most real longing and need of 
the soul was expressed by the same little girl, when 
in her prayer she said, “ Lord, love me when I am 
naughty.” 

Children are very human; they don’t coneeive that 
it is necessary for them to be cautious to avoid giv¬ 
ing offense; they haven’t learned the conventionalities 
of society; they have not learned to say, “ I am de¬ 
lighted,” when they have been bored to death; to say 
they love books and their teachers, and to sit quiet 
and unprotesting when their parents make statements 
about them that the children know are not quite 
straight. The child sees things just as they are, 
and even their faults are frequently our faults re¬ 
peated. 

Being very human, children speak out what is in 
their minjds and hearts. “ Why don’t you sing 
louder,” said the teacher to a boy. They were sing¬ 
ing, “ I want to be an angel, and with the angels 
stay.” The truthful boy replied, “ I am singing as 
loud as I feel.” He was a hale, hearty, ruddy-faced 
boy wrapped up in marbles, shinny, and baseball, and 
he had no longing for an angelhood, and so he was 
singing as loud as he felt. 

There is a sort of complacency found in children, 


132 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 


however, which is inseparable from ignorance. A lit¬ 
tle four-year-old said, “ Aunt Fannie, is God very 
good? ” “ Yes, very good,” said Aunt Fannie. A 

pause, then the four-year-old asked, “ Is he gooder 
than me?” “ Yes, better than anybody in the whole 
world.” After pausing for a moment, the child said: 
“ Maybe, Aunt Fannie, you don’t know how good 
I am.” A grown person would never have said that. 
Big people only talk about the sins they feel them¬ 
selves free from, hoping to be credited with an extraor¬ 
dinary degree of Christian humility. People would 
be disappointed and become angry if taken at their 
word. I wonder how Paul would have felt if some¬ 
one had said, “ Yes, Brother Paul, we have known all 
along that you were the chief of sinners.” 

When we are commanded to “ become as little chil¬ 
dren, it does not mean in every respect, for chil¬ 
dren are selfish and wayward. The essential virtue 
in children which we are to imitate is trust.” The 
child believes implicitly in what we say. If you tell 
him there is a pot of gold at the end of the rain¬ 
bow, he believes you, and is ready to set out for 
the prize. It is this trait of trust that we are to imi¬ 
tate. A little girl heard that the church people were 
going to meet together to pray for rain during a long 
drought. She was the only one who carried an um¬ 
brella to church, and she was the only one that es¬ 
caped a drenching. She set an example of faith and 
trust that people were to follow. We do childhood 
a wrong when we think or say that they must lose 
all their trust when .they grow larger and wander 
away from their childish faith. 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 


133 


It should be recognized that children are morally 
undeveloped just as they are physically or mentally 
undeveloped. Because a child lies, it does not follow 
that he will lie when he gets his moral growth. I 
remember the child at the age of five who was a moral 
monstrosity. He would deliberately kick or strike 
another with whom he was playing, and apparently 
without any cause. His parents did not take the mat¬ 
ter seriously; they looked upon these little acts as 
incidental to his life, since with them he was lovable 
and obedient. To-day that child is a well-grown boy, 
who is teachable, and there is no trace of criminal 
tendency in him. We should no more expect a child 
to be fully developed in his conscience and affections 
than in his body or his mind. It is not to be for¬ 
gotten that good has been inherited with the evil, 
and to foster the good is the burden the parent takes 
up and ought never to lay down. The tremendous 
responsibility resting upon parents and teachers can 
not be expressed in words. Ages ago the birds pick¬ 
ing up their food by the river bank left their tracks 
in the soft mud. To-day we can see those tracks 
in the solid rock. So it is with the child. The im¬ 
pressions made now will remain as clearly and as 
permanently defined as the tracks in the rock; for, 
as someone has said, “ The child’s mind is wax to 
receive, but marble to retain.” A child is apt to show 
more temper than a grown person, and we are as¬ 
tonished at times to see what little things will anger 
it. A little three-year-old said, angrily, “ Opy the 
door,” and accompanied the command with a kick 
against the door. It was opened, when she said, as 


134 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 


she entered in an angry mood, “ When I say, r Opy 
the door , Opy the door.’ ” In this act was shown 
that domineering spirit which is as natural as Satan 
himself. But then we must not conclude that the 
child will be satanic when fully developed. 

When the child by his evil nature is led to com¬ 
mit his first theft by taking an apple or cake, the 
parent must not think that this is a sign that he 
will be a thief and a robber when he is grown. I 
know there is an old saying so oft repeated, “ As 
the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined,” and people try 
to twist the saying into the indications of the man 
as found in the child; but if the child has been care¬ 
fully studied and directed by the parent, he need not 
grow into a monstrosity. 

The will power is early developed, and hence for 
a time the training of children proceeds just as it 
would with the lower animals. Some great philoso¬ 
pher says, “ You can not cure a dog of committing 
depredations in the cellar by punishing him in the 
barn.” So in the line of punishments as an end to 
training, there must always be some relation to the 
offense; in other words, the punished child should al¬ 
ways know for what he is being punished. He is not 
a mere “ Jack-in-the-box ” to be pushed aside and to 
be played upon by all sorts of whims. His interests 
are as many sided as the civilization into which he 
is born. 

To watch the different powers develop in the child 
is one of the interesting things of life. The powers 
are not strong at first, but by exercise, they gain 
strength daily, just as a physical power is developed. 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 


35 


If one of the arms were fastened to the side and not 
allowed to move, while the other was given full ex¬ 
ercise, the free one would grow to full size, while the 
one held fast would gradually shrink and perish; it 
is the same where a faculty is neglected or any emotion 
of the child is stifled. It becomes the duty of every 
parent, therefore, to give the child’s powers the great¬ 
est liberty compatible with proper training. Children 
will become self-willed, disobedient, and unreasonable, 
unless they are properly trained; and there are parents 
and teachers in the world who are as unfit to train 
children as a cannibal is to teach morality. This 
has been the case since the early ages. Old Eli, of 
the Bible, was a good man, but he allowed his two 
sons, Hophni and Phineas, to do just as they pleased, 
and “ they made themselves vile.” David was a good 
man, but he allowed Absalom to run the household 
so long, that, after he became a handsome man, he 
wanted to rule the whole kingdom, and died in the 
attempt; and there are parents in this day who allow 
juvenile inclinations to predominate, and their chil¬ 
dren go to the bad. There are children who, indeed, 
are to be pitied, because they have never had any 
restraints placed about them. Someone said of Mr. 
Skinner, the congressman, that “ he is very careful 
about his children.” “ Yes,” said a neighbor, “ he 
is trying to bring them up in the way he should have 
gone himself.” Poor children! if untrained, they soon 
lose all sense of inborn obligations and care little for 
anyone but self. 

Among the passengers on a Pullman train was a 
woman much overdressed, accompanied by a bright- 


36 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 


looking nurse girl and a self-willed boy three years 
old. The boy aroused the indignation of the pas¬ 
sengers by his continual shrieks and screams and 
vicious actions toward the nurse girl. He tore her 
hat, scratched her hands, struck her in the face,— all 
this without any remonstrance from his mother. When 
the nurse girl manifested any firmness, the mother 
scolded sharply. Finally the mother laid her head 
against the back of the seat and went to sleep. About 
that time a wasp came sailing along and flew against 
the window where the boy and nurse sat. He tried 
to catch the wasp. The nurse caught his hand, say¬ 
ing, in a motherly way, “ Harry mustn’t touch it; 
will hurt Harry.” He screamed and began to kick 
and strike the girl. The mother, without opening her 
eyes, said, “ Mary, let him have what he wants.” 

“ But ma’am-” said the girl. “ Let him have it 

at once” Thus encouraged the boy clutched at 
the wasp and caught it. The screams that followed 
brought tears of joy to the eyes of the passengers who 
had been watching the little episode. The mother 
raised her head, and said, “ Mary, let him have what 
he wants, at once,” and Mary said, hurriedly, “ He’s 
got it, ma’am.” How many children there are spoiled 
by parents who are unfit to be called parents. But 
all mothers are not like the one described, or our 
race would soon be one of desperadoes. Indeed, I 
hope she is an exceptional one. 

A short time ago I had occasion to travel over 
the Pennsylvania Central Railroad. In the same car 
in which I rode, I noticed a party consisting of a 
lady and a gentleman, with a little child and its nurse. 



PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 


137 


They were evidently a good family, and of such ap- 
pearance as to attract attention. I naturally wondered 
who they were, but never found out, but I saw evi¬ 
dence of a sensible mother. The nurse and child were 
seated directly in front of the parents. After trav¬ 
eling for several hours, the mother reached over and 
took hold of the child, lifted it over the seat onto 
her lap, put the child’s arm around her neck, and 
its face up against her own, placing her arm around 
the child and holding it close in her embrace. 

Not thinking where we were on the road and what 
was before us, I wondered why such attentions, just 
at that moment. While thus musing, we shot into the 
long tunnel at Gallitzin. Darkness covered us for a 
while and then light flashed out of darkness, and I 
understood it all. The mother, with good maternal 
sense, knew the train was approaching the tunnel, and 
feared that her child might be frightened, and so took 
her into her arms while in the darkness. Nor did the 
child, by a single sound or movement, show that she 
felt alarm. The warm embrace of the good mother 
killed all chance of fear in the child. If all mothers 
were like this latter one described, we would soon 
have a race of the greatest, and most intelligent people 
on the earth. 

One of the most singular hallucinations of a vast 
number of parents is that they should try to bring 
up their children according to certain theories, even 
when the theories do not fit the children. Look among 
your friends and see if you don’t know of mothers 
practicing methods which have come down several 
generations, or a method they have gotten from a 


138 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 


book. One mother who did not know the difference 
between a book baby and a real one, who was amused 
with the fun in “ Helen’s Babies,” gave her children all 
the cake and other dainties they wanted, just as 
“ Budge and Toddy ” had them in the book. She 
did not pause in this until she had buried two little 
ones and the third one was seriously ill. “ Now,” 
said her husband, “ we must begin to take care of 
the child’s diet. We always thought children should 
eat just what they wanted, but the doctor said our 
children would not have succumbed to the scarlet 
fever, if their digestive system had had greater re¬ 
serve force.” 

A few years ago, one of the leading journals de¬ 
scribed the life of a boy not yet four years old,— the 
son of a wealthy widow. According to the descrip¬ 
tion, the boy had a nurse who cared for his body, 
another person who attended entirely to his clothing, 
still another who was his governess. He had a rid¬ 
ing master to drill him in athletics, and the best phy¬ 
sician of the city came to see him once a week. The 
wealthy mother was determined that her boy should 
have all the advantages of a well-trained body. She 
spent her time in going from one reception to an¬ 
other, and saw her child only at long intervals, and 
never at night. The boy, with all his training, de¬ 
veloped into a self-willed, ungrateful boy, strong in 
body, but with emotions undeveloped. Oh, how much 
better it would have been if he could have felt deeply 
a mother’s love and a mother’s care. If hourly, he 
could have laid his face against that of his mother 
without reserve or hesitation, how much innocence he 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 


139 


would have developed, and how much strength of 
character he would have gained! It seems a pity that 
any child should be separated from the love and trust 
and confidence which God implants in his very nature. 

Too many mothers leave to servants these signifi¬ 
cant moments of their children’s lives, lovely to moth¬ 
ers if they will enjoy them, and priceless to the grow¬ 
ing character of their receptive powers, if taken ad¬ 
vantage of. 

If we wish to know how to treat a plant, we must 
know the conditions of its healthy growth: what 
soil it needs; what culture at first, and all along dur¬ 
ing its growth. And how much we need to study the 
child, his characteristics, as well as his mind and his 
environments. How much we need to give him some 
of our time. A boy went to a neighbor for advice 
about spending a dollar which he had for Christmas. 

The man said, “ Why don’t you ask your father 
for advice?” The boy stammered, and said, “ I — I 
— I — am not very well acquainted with him.” Doc¬ 
tor Palter tells of a young man who stood at the bar 
of justice to be sentenced for forgery. The judge 
had known him from childhood, for his father had 
been a famous lawyer, and had written the most.ex¬ 
haustive treatise on “ Trusts ” that was in existence. 

“ Do you remember your father, whom you have 
disgraced? ” asked the judge, sternly. “ Yes, sir,” said 
the young man, “ I remember him very well. When 
I used to go to him for companionship and advice, 
he would say, ‘ Run away, I am busy.’ He was writ¬ 
ing a book. He finished the book, but neglected me.” 

Having looked at some of the early traits and char- 


140 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 


acteristics, I come now to speak of what we should 
do for these powers and dispositions. 

There are many parents who teach their children, 
but do no training, «for training is not only teaching 
children, but following this by practice. 

When Oliver Wendell Holmes was asked when 
the training of the child should begin, he said: “ One 
hundred years before he is born.-” If that be true, 
then we are training a race which will do good or 
evil a hundred years to come, and we live not only 
in this century but in the centuries yet to come. When 
Napoleon drew up his army under the shadow of the 
pyramids of Egypt, he said: “ Remember, soldiers, 
that from yonder heights forty centuries look down 
upon you,” and from the pyramids of opportunity we 
look down on the ages to come. Our part in the des¬ 
tinies of the unborn millions is a sublime one. 

Who is to do the training and when shall it be 
done? Certainly you would say, the parent and the 
teacher. No opportunity should be lost to train the 
children under our care. At the table is a good place 
to study the child and train it. We regret that busi¬ 
ness necessities and family cares so often make the 
breakfast a hurried meal. In too many families the 
breakfast table is like a lunch counter at a railroad 
station, where everyone eats and runs. The secret 
of the parents’ power is to have companionship with 
the children at the table. If there is no one to direct 
the children at the table, how can we expect them to 
be mannerly and well-behaved? How many embar- 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 141 

rassments could be prevented if parents would take 
a little more time for training children in table eti¬ 
quette. It is the small boy who tells things which 
turn parents’ hair white, and the table is the fa¬ 
vorite theater of his activity. Not long since, in the 
presence of distinguished company, a bright little boy 
peered over into a dish at the head of the table, and 
exclaimed, “ What a little bit of a chicken for so 
many people to eat.” The company smiled, the parents 
tried to quiet him, but like Banquo’s ghost, “ he would 
not down,” and exclaimed, “ I wonder if that is the 
one that was sick ? ” 

A boy who has not been properly trained is an 
uncertain quantity in the presence of company. Even 
in the best of families, where children have had proper 
training, someone will at some time embarrass the 
parents. A story is told of a minister who was tak¬ 
ing “ tea ” with one of his parishioners, a widow 
who was a worthy member. At the table was the 
minister, her small boy, and herself. She said to the 
pastor, “ Will you have a piece of pie? ” “ Not any,” 
said he. Then she turned to her little boy, and said 
“ Will you have a piece, Robbie?” “ No, mamma,” 
said Robbie. “ Why,” said the minister, “ I thought 
all little boys liked pie.” “ I do,” said Robbie. “ I 
could eat the whole of it; but mamma said if you did 
not take any, for me not to, and then we would have 
a whole pie when her dear friend, Mr. Jones, comes 
to-morrow.” 

Obedience .— In the study and in the training of 


142 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 


the child we shall find that it is better to train the 
child’s will than almost any other power. He may 
alter his mind as he grows older, but his will power 
will not be changed, hence the importance of teaching 
and training a child in obedience. Everything in na¬ 
ture that amounts to anything obeys certain laws of 
growth and development. Everything in art obeys. 
Coaxing and hiring a child is not governing him; he 
must be conscious of authority, if he ever amounts 
to anything. The hardest and at the same time the 
most valuable lesson the child ever learns is to obey. 
One of the first things we are told about Jesus is 
that “ he was subject to his parents.” And then the 
narrative afterward goes on to say that “ he grew 
in wisdom and in favor with God and men.” Obedi¬ 
ence is the kernel of consecrated life; it is greater than 
geography, and reaches higher than arithmetic, and is 
a thing the child must learn at the beginning of life. 

The future study of the child will deal more par- 
ticulary with his moral nature. In order to do this 
properly, the home and the school must be brought 
into closer relationship. Parents and teachers should 
be well acquainted. The child is the one to be bene¬ 
fited by the acquaintance, and the study of the child 
by both parent and teacher is the one thing needed 
to-day to make our educational work of the greatest 
value. Study the child and adapt the training, and 
this great nation shall be led by the child. Christ 
said, “ Suffer the little children.” “ The more we 
think of children, the more we are like the Di- 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 


143 


vine; the less we think of children, the more we are 
like savages.” A star led wise men to the Child in 
the manger, and a child will lead wise men to Christ. 

We talk about the possibilities of a grain,of wheat; 
about the possibilities of science and art, and the pos¬ 
sibilities of human discoveries of all kinds, but nothing 
compares with a child in its infinite possibilities. 

The child is the most valuable thing in all this 
world, because of its possibilities. “ Only a child! ” 
One might as well say, “Only a little blue egg;” 
but within that frail shell sleeps the robin. “ Only a 
trickling stream;” but other trickling* streams will 
flow into this one, and with tremendous force, turn¬ 
ing wheels and spindles, it will rush on to the sea. 

It might have been said of John the Baptist, “ Only 
a child;” but that child presently, as herald of the 
King of kings, would stir a nation, calling it to re¬ 
pentance and righteousness. It might have been said 
of Abraham Lincoln, “ Only a child,” but that child 
soon, by a master stroke, would break the chains of 
slavery, and set a downtrodden race free. “ Only 
a child,” but the child is the man of the future. Alex¬ 
ander and Caesar, in all the proud possession of 
unlimited regal sway and in the pomp and splendor 
of their unequaled power, were as incapable of self¬ 
protection as they were incapable of obtaining their 
very life’s food. Napoleon, Gladstone, and Lincoln, 
with all their might, intellect, and force of character, 
were once helpless babes; and Morse, Franklin, Ful¬ 
ton, and Edison were once carried in the arms of a 


144 


PRACTICAL CHILD STUDY. 


mother, as helpless as wax dolls, and yet see what 
they have done, the miracles they have wrought, and 
the achievements they have won. How much of this 
success and subsequent glory depended upon the lov¬ 
ing, tender care of the parent when they were just 
entering the long plane of life! Every teacher who 
to-day looks into the faces of children, may be gazing 
into the windows of a mind that will one day startle 
the world. A thought may be aroused which will 
develop into an idea, and that into an achievement that 
will shake to its very foundations the whole fabric of 
intellectual power. 


*' 


M 


R R Y 



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